


The Starry Sky and the Deep Sea

by spicedpiano



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Action, Alien Planet, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Is A Mermaid, Engineers, Erik Being Cocky, Erik Looks Hot in a Uniform, Fairy Tales, First Time, Genocide, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I'm on a boat motherfucker, IN SPACE!, Illness, Introspection, Language Barrier, Little Mermaid, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Masturbation, Mutism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Slow Build, Space Opera, Spaceships, Spacewalking, Teaching, smitten!Erik
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:35:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 66,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a star, Charles is forced into a human form following a crime of treason, cursed and exiled into a mortal life.  Rescued by a crew of mutants led by Commander Erik Lehnsherr, he soon realizes that the voyage they are on is doomed.</p><p>...But how can he save the man he loves when, if he speaks, anyone who hears his voice will die?</p><p>[This is the story of the little mermaid ... in space.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the X-Men Tales challenge on LJ.
> 
> Thanks to **Tahariel** for her help and encouragement! :D Thanks also the members of the X-Men Tales chat, for their support.

PART ONE.

\--

Once, when he was small, he asked the Eldest:

“Can the ship people live forever?”

It seemed as if they had always been present in the world – in the tales whispered between the stars, the legends spoken by moons. The ship people, who clumsily raked their way through space, trailing debris; who blinked their tiny lights at the darkness; who trundled out in search of new planets, to scatter themselves across the rock.

All the best stories involved the ship people. They were heroes and villains, the seekers and the takers.

Ship man who wished upon Betelgeuse and received his heart’s desire. Ship woman who lost her way and the constellations guided her home. Ship people whose wars destroyed a galaxy.

“You ask so many questions, my dear….” He can tell the Eldest finds him sweet, and admires his curiosity, but that she wishes he were more like the others of his generation, silent and watching.

“Can they?” he asks again.

“No,” the Eldest told him. “Ship people are fragile; their lives are easily snuffed out. But when they die, they do not turn into star dust, as we do. Their souls rise up and walk along the Milky Way, to a glittering new universe created for them alone.”

“I wish I was a ship person,” he remembers saying.

“No, dearest.”

He felt the Eldest’s mind, brushing against his: cool, familiar, liquid.

“No, you do not.”

\--

It was a century later that they cast him out.

The charge was treason.

\--


	2. Chapter 2

He is found curled up on the shore of a small fuel planet in the middle of a half-forgotten star system, far from anywhere that anyone calls home.

The first time he experiences touch, it is like the filament of a nebula, jolting down through the core of him – and the blackness is yanked away and he _sees_ – he sees a face above him, distorted slightly through the curved glass of a helmet – he sees the galaxy – so many worlds, shattered overhead – he sees … with _eyes –_

It is too much. 

He is cold - a cold that stretches out for miles.

The darkness caves in over him and around him once more, the stars careening up past the line of his sight; he drowns beneath the weight of so much black water, falls.

Silence, again.

\--

When he wakes again, he has been moved.

He is lying on something soft, something that gives easily beneath his body’s weight. This time he knows enough to keep his eyes clenched shut; there is no soft darkness here, only an orange glow that twists something within him – an uncomfortable wrench which sets his mind to whirring anxiously.

He does not know where he is. He tastes something bitter and acidic in his mouth. His mind throbs.

“Hey,” someone says. “Hey, I think he’s waking up!”

It is instinctive, the way he wants to reach out and thread himself into the nearest mind.

He manages, however, to yank himself back – and it feels as if he is shredding his mind against razor wire, the way he has to wind his will around it - to restrain himself. He is the remains of a supernova: he is a neutron star, everything he is – the supermassive, blinding expanse of a once-giant condensed down to a tiny speck – spinning with the effort of controlling his own mass – and knowing that if he fails, if he lets go, he will collapse in on himself. And he will take all the rest of them with him.

A black hole, destroying everything.

“How do you feel?” A new voice speaks nearby. A softer voice. Feminine. 

He wrenches the wires tighter still, fights to keep himself from falling into the gravity of the new mind as it draws closer. He is only just able to manage it; he can feel her presence brushing up against his – his mind sizzles at the contact and for a moment he fears – but no, no, she is still … it is all right, this seems to be acceptable, to be _aware_ as long as he does not –

“Can you hear me? Sir? I need you to open your eyes.”

He forces himself to obey, even if only partway – the light searing into his vision, bright as the center of a nebula – 

Fingers press against his eyelids and pull them upward too quickly. He does not have time to prepare himself; the full impact of the fluorescent lighting overhead slamming into him all at once. 

He realizes what is happening, the lift in the back of his throat, the widening of his mouth, just in time. He catches the scream before it can break forth. He swallows it, something beneath the sternum convulsing as he tries to keep it there – and it is a pain unlike anything he has ever felt before, the burn in his eyes and the frantic thrash of his mind lacerating itself against his self-drawn bonds.

“Pupils are dilated, but equal and reactive to light,” says the feminine voice.

The glittering white light is slowly, slowly fading, leeching out toward the edges of his vision. The world condenses around him: shadows at first, grey smears on canvas. 

A figure appears. It – she – is leaning over him, face close to his.

A ship woman, he realizes.

He has never seen one up close before.

She releases his eyelids at last and he blinks his eyes several times, chasing away the tiny black flecks which still cling to the periphery of his sight. 

He finds himself fascinated by the delicate upward curve of her nose – by her dark hair hanging loose about her face, her soft brown eyes, the way her lips part slightly when she meets his gaze. 

She is beautiful, but she brings no warmth to his mind.

He turns his face away.

“You’re going to be all right,” she tells him. “Lord knows how you survived being out there, breathing that air, wearing only your skin – but you’re going to be fine. All your vitals are normal.”

“Isn’t Stark Industries developing some kind of respiratory implant?” the first voice speaks again.

“Yes,” the ship woman says. “ _Developing._ But the low atmospheric pressure out there should have torn apart his lungs. That is, if the ice didn’t get to him first; the surface temp on Thanet is -200 degrees Celsius.” 

“Maybe he’s cold-blooded,” the first voice – male, he decides at last – suggests. The ship man cuts into his line of sight. His hair is golden, like starlight. 

“So, what are you?” he says. “Some kind of reptile-alien?”

“Alex,” the ship woman chides.

“Or maybe he’s a mutant. Adapt to survive, like Darwin.” 

The ship woman considers this suggestion, frowning. And then she moves in closer, sitting down next to him. 

“Are you feeling better?” She reaches for his forearm, pressing two fingers to the inside of his wrist. “When we first picked you up, your pulse was all over the place. Temp, too. We were worried.”

The urge to press forward and sink himself into her mind is, at this distance, nearly overpowering. He pulls his arm out of her grasp, cradling it to his chest and pressing his own hand over the skin she had touched. His flesh throbs, there: a racing beat.

“I’m sorry.” She withdraws by one step. “I should have asked. I’m Dr. MacTaggert. What’s your name?”

 _I don’t have one,_ he thinks. He does not speak.

“Do you understand what I am saying to you?” The ship woman frowns. “Do you know Common Tongue?”

He knows it. He knows every language that has ever been. He overhears the whispers that pass by in the vastness of space: ship men and women, thinking, in all the tongues of the universe.

He knows, he understands, and he remains silent.

It feels as if something has been carved out from the very center of him. He can still feel himself, bundled up inside this ship person’s body - he still feels his mind and his voice - tightly wound, suppressed, but _there._

It’s something else that has gone missing.

It’s the feeling of weightlessness. It’s the way he felt, drifting through a galaxy, surrounded by starlight. The warm press of a million different minds, sharing a million different emotions. His family; his people. 

It would be different, he thinks, if he had the choice to go back.

But he does not.

Even if he could speak, he thinks as he lets his eyes fall shut –

\- he would not want to.

\--


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the lovely **Tahariel** , for looking over this for me, and generally being awesomesauce. <3

They bring him a set of plain blue clothing from the closet and tell him to change into it. 

“It’s not the most fashionable, I know,” the ship woman tells him, “but it will do for now.”

He nods his thanks and she smiles, leaving the room while he changes. Of course; he had almost forgotten how particular the ship people are about their bodies, and keeping them hidden. He covers his up with the blue clothes and almost opens his mouth to tell MacTaggert that he is done, and she can come back – but thinks better of it at the last second and walks toward the door instead.

Halfway across the room, he catches movement in the periphery of his vision and turns. There’s a mirror, three feet by two, affixed to the starboard wall. It is the first time he sees his own ship person’s body: male, pale-skinned and stocky, dark hair tangled and unruly, neglected for all twenty-four hours of this form’s existence. He hesitates just a moment before he steps forward, closer. When the tip of his nose is almost touching the mirror he can see the faint dusting of freckles across his cheeks, the permanently upward curve of his mouth. He lifts a hand and traces the shell of one ear, fascinated by the ridges and dips of cartilage, the soft fuzzy lobe. His fingers – short and strong as the rest of this form – drop down to his throat and rest at the hard protrusion above his vocal chords. 

There is no one around – surely, if he were just to say one thing, to part his lips and speak a _single_ word –

A knock at the door. “Are you decent?”

He jerks back from the mirror, feeling as if he had almost been caught doing something illegal. He checks the reflection again, to make sure that he is completely covered, before he opens the door.

“Ah,” the ship woman ( _MacTaggert_ ) says, brushing past him into the room. “That looks much better. It’s not ideal, but it will do for now.” A moment’s pause as she looks him over. “Though, as I have orders to take you to the Commander as soon as you’re awake, we really must do something about that hair.” 

_The Commander?_

He lets her sit him down in a chair as she takes a comb to his head, tugging out knots with a brisk efficiency that is unique to ship people. It is not painful, somehow, despite her efforts. Perhaps, he thinks, the pain is just unnoticeable, in light of how it feels to keep his mind under control - thoughts already bleeding out around the wires.

“You know you have to tell me your name,” MacTaggert says as she brushes, bracing one hand against his skull as she battles a particularly stubborn tangle. “The Commander will get it out of you either way, but it will be easier on you, if you just tell me.”

He turns his gaze down to his hands, clasped together in his lap. His nails are clipped short and clean; he is unsure if they were made that way, or if the ship people trimmed them while he slept. 

MacTaggert sighs. “Suit yourself.” She finishes with his hair and steps back, motioning for him to stand and follow. 

She leads him out of the medical bay and into the main body of the ship. The medical bay is on the lower levels, so they have to take an elevator up to the bridge. He watches the lights flicker on the screen by the doors, small blue orbs tracking their ascent. 

He has never been inside a working starship before. He has seen these screens, has seen the medical bays and elevators and bridges of a thousand fleets - but only ever just the shells of them, their inhabitants are long since dead, drifting fuel-less or broken or ravaged by illness through the vast expanse of space. He has studied them thoroughly, fascinated by the ingenuity of the ship people, their determination to exist in a universe so hostile to their survival – and not only to exist but to _thrive,_ to learn and to explore and to conquer. Traits that, some say, will be their undoing. 

He learned the ship people’s dreams in their minds; but in what was left of their vessels, he discovered their world.

A quiet _ding_ , and the doors of the elevator slide open. They step out onto the bridge.

It is … unlike anything he has ever seen before. True, he has glimpsed such things in the memories and sights of the ship people whose minds he has touched – he has seen these places, cold and bare – but none of that compares to the _life_ of it, now. Here. Like _this_.

The entire bridge is stainless steel: pale and gleaming, almost white in the glow of the fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling. Windows span the nose of the ship, allowing the pilots and the Commander a panoramic view of their surroundings. Every person on the bridge has a purpose: the communication experts, the engineers, the officers, all dedicated to their tasks and to the running of their ship. It is more difficult than ever, now, keeping his mind under control; he longs to feel the thoughts of everyone in this room, to understand them, and have them understand him in turn. He bites his lower lip, hard, to keep from making any sound, head throbbing with the effort of restraint.

“Commander Lehnsherr,” MacTaggert says, and he realizes belatedly that she has taken hold of his arm just below the elbow, using the grip to propel him forward. He does not resist.

The man in the Commander’s chair rises. He is tall, wearing the black uniform of a high-level officer: trimmed with silver for engineer, and gold for Commander. A shudder unlaces down his spine. He has seen that uniform before, but only on corpses. To see it now – the fabric shifting with Lehnsherr’s every movement, tugging taut against his chest and thighs when he steps forward – it is eerily surreal.

Lehnsherr’s gaze lands on MacTaggert first before flicking over – and Lehnsherr’s eyes meet his, eyes the same color and quality as the mirror in the medical bay. 

“This is him?” Lehnsherr asks. He speaks to MacTaggert without looking at her; his attention is fixed solely on the intruder aboard his ship. 

“He won’t identify himself,” MacTaggert says. “We’ve been calling him Patient X. He doesn’t seem to understand Common.”

“What is your name?” Lehnsherr asks him – only he asks in Alvarado, not Common – and when he receives no response he only repeats the question: first in Sihwa, and then Ulugbek, and Xiluo, and Mayacam. 

He keeps his lips pressed tightly shut and does not speak; he pretends not to understand.

Lehnsherr looks at him through a narrowing gaze. “Very well,” he says. “Dr. MacTaggert, please escort our visitor to my study. I will meet him there shortly.”

“Yes, sir.” 

MacTaggert takes his arm again and he follows without contest, off the bridge and back into the elevator. They only go down a single floor, this time – and MacTaggert has to punch in a six-digit code before the ship will allow them off the elevator. 

The doors open onto a strangely cozy hallway. The walls are paneled such that they appear to be made of some organic land-material even though they are, in fact, steel, the floor itself carpeted with a lush array of patterned rugs. Even the bulbs in the lights overhead have been switched out for something with a softer glow. These are the officers’ quarters. 

MacTaggert leads him down to the end of the hall and punches in another series of numbers, then leans forward to allow the retinal identification system to scan her eye. The interface chirps happily and the doors _whoosh_ open.

It’s a sitting room. No – a _study_ , Lehnsherr had called it. A study, with two more doors (also locked) leading off to … a bedroom, if he remembers his explorations of abandoned ships correctly, and probably a bathroom as well. The walls are lined with well-stocked bookcases; the desk is neat and clean.

“Have a seat,” MacTaggert says. 

She gestures at one of the armchairs and he obeys, still a little unused to the way this body feels when he changes its height too quickly, moving from standing to sitting in the span of a few seconds. 

MacTaggert remains upright. “I wish I could stay,” she says, “but I’m needed in medical. The Commander will be down shortly. There are plenty of books, if you want something to read while you wait.”

She pauses, clearly expecting him to respond, so he nods, once. She seems disappointed with that, but does not press further. 

He waits until she is gone before relaxing the grasp he has on his own mind. Somehow, loosening the barbed wire is as painful as tightening it – and for a moment he feels as if the room is tilting around him, everything in it going blurred –

Things settle. He has not released his mind entirely, of course; he still cannot sense anyone else, has pulled back enough that he does not run the risk of overhearing anyone else’s thoughts – or them, hearing his. But just for now, just for a few seconds, with MacTaggert gone and Lehnsherr not yet arrived, he can breathe easy. 

The room is empty. He never thought he would be so glad to be alone.

He gives himself sixty seconds before winding his thoughts back up inside his head. He does not want to take the chance that Lehnsherr comes too soon – that he might lose control and push his way into Lehnsherr’s mind before he can stop himself.

And yet the minutes tick past and he sits in silence, watching the door that never opens. 

He finds himself turning his attention elsewhere, after a time. He studies Lehnsherr’s desk: it’s a curious thing, constructed entirely of metal. There is no visible computer system. Does Lehnsherr use a portable tablet? Or is the monitor embedded into the desk surface? He can see no seams - but there is a book, resting on the corner of the desk. Red binding, black lettering. After a moment he pushes himself back up and crosses over to pick it up; it is heavy in his hand, falling open automatically to a spot held by a paper-thin copper bookmark. He cannot read the words, of course; his people have always existed within the mind, and whatever information he needed in the past, he has always been able to pick up from the thoughts of ship people without ever having to learn their written languages. 

The typography is beautiful, though; blank ink pressed into white, the parchment indented just slightly where the letters are marked (he can feel it, when he traces the tips of his fingers across the page). The words are like little insects, crawling across paper – even more so, when he holds the book away from his face at arm’s length. Such tiny etchings, infused with such great power, all of it completely foreign to him. 

He glances over toward the bookcase. There is an empty spot on the fourth shelf, just behind the desk, where the red book was taken but not returned, between a set of notebooks and a series of books with identical green bindings 

He steps closer, shutting the red book with one hand and rising up on the balls of his feet, reaching to slide it back into –

The door opens.

He freezes in place, yanking viciously at the wires around his telepathy, fighting against the unexpected gravity of Lehnsherr’s mind as it threatens to draw him in.

“So,” Lehnsherr says. The door slides shut behind him, locking. “You’re the one my crew can’t stop talking about.”

\--


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks again to **Tahariel** for her unflinching support and encouragement, and for being my second set of eyes. 
> 
> Thanks also to everyone on twitter and tumblr who expressed their confidence in this story this week. This one's for you.

He stands there, stock still, as Lehnsherr approaches. Somehow it felt simpler, being in the Commander’s presence when they were still up on the bridge, when he was battling the magnetic draw of a dozen minds instead of only one. Because now, like this, he cannot avoid the reality of his situation:

He is trapped here, voiceless and powerless, on a ship of creatures who do not even know his kind exist. He has no way of explaining his presence, or how he survived being planetside without a ship person’s protective suit. He is locked in a room with a man a head and a half taller and undoubtedly much stronger, who looks as likely to rip him apart as he is to shake his hand. 

Lehnsherr drawing closer does little to help matters.

He can feel something pounding through his entire body when Lehnsherr finally stops, half a step away, close enough that he can see the dark rings circling round Lehnsherr’s irises, feels as if he is on the verge of losing his orbit around Lehnsherr’s mind and falling into the very center of him.

Lehnsherr lifts a hand and he flinches –

\- but Lehnsherr is only plucking the book from his grasp, flipping it over in his hand to glance at the title.

“ _Mechanics of Plumbing Design on an N-271 Starship,_ ” Lehnsherr reads off. “You are interested in spaceship plumbing? Fascinating.”

It takes him a moment, without the use of his telepathy, to realize Lehnsherr is being sarcastic.

He feels his cheeks going hot again and shakes his head, hard enough that it sets his temples to throbbing once more. He reaches for the closest book on the shelf, clutching it to his chest with both hands and taking a quick step back from Lehnsherr.

But Lehnsherr just gives him a small, angular smile and returns the book on plumbing to its spot on the shelf. “Please,” he says. “Sit.”

He returns to his chair from before, perching on the very edge of the seat, knuckles gone white around the new book. 

Lehnsherr takes the armchair just across from him, leaning back against its spine and sitting with the ankle of one leg crossed to rest atop the knee of the other – lounging with a sense of ease that is altogether uncommon on a man wearing a Commander’s uniform.

“I see you do understand Common Tongue, then,” Lehnsherr says.

He feels something in him briefly go tight and still. ...Of course. Plumbing. And then when Lehnsherr told him to sit, he had obeyed - He should have known. He should have been better prepared –

He finds himself watching Lehnsherr a bit more closely, now. If he cannot rely on Lehnsherr’s thoughts as information, he must use other means: posture, tone of voice, facial expression. All those idiosyncratic trivia he was familiar with only through reading the minds of other ship people, from their thoughts, and _their_ experience. This is nothing like that, at all.

Slowly, he nods.

“But you still refuse to speak?” Lehnsherr lifts a brow. When there is no response, Lehnsherr continues: “I should inform you, then, that if you cannot give me a name and account for your presence on Thanet, I will have to assume it was calculated to assure you gained passage aboard this vessel, and that your aim is to forcefully abort our mission." Lehnsherr takes in a small breath. "Under such circumstances, you will be incarcerated in the brig for the remainder of our voyage, before being transferred to Federation police." Lehnsherr pauses, watching his expression closely. "Do you understand me?”

He blinks, twice, in rapid succession. Lehnsherr appears, if anything, pleased to have so clearly thrown him off his guard.

“Good,” Lehnsherr says. “Then, will you speak?”

He shakes his head and lowers his gaze, the best apology he can manage. He pauses for a moment, considering - and then he lifts his hand up to his throat and touches his voice box, his lips.

“…Ah.” There is a lighter note to Lehnsherr’s voice now. Something almost like … comprehension? 

He dares another look back up at Lehnsherr; the Commander has leaned forward in his chair and placed both feet firmly back on the ground, watching him. 

Lehnsherr points toward his desk. “Could you write it down?”

He shakes his head again and attempts a small, embarrassed sort of smile. Appropriately embarrassed, he thinks; it is his understanding that most ship people learn to read and write their language from quite a young age. But how to _explain_ …. He lifts the book in his lap and flips it open to a middle page. He taps a finger at the words, then points to his own chest, and shakes his head once more. Snaps the book closed, shrugs. 

“You can’t … read?” Lehnsherr interprets, a frown creasing his brow. 

He gestures in Lehnsherr’s vague direction as if to say: _You’re correct._

“Well,” Lehnsherr says after a second has passed, “I suppose that explains the uncanny interest in plumbing.”

He feels something release inside his chest: a previously unknown tension, relaxing. He sets the book down in his lap and rests both hands on top of it, gives Lehnsherr another smile – one Lehnsherr actually deigns to return, although the expression seems tight on his lips.

“I still need to ask you a few questions, however,” Lehnsherr says. “You may nod ‘yes’ or shake your head ‘no.’”

Lehnsherr pauses long enough to receive a single, quick nod of agreement before he continues on.

“Are you an indigenous person of Thanet?”

Thanet … ah, yes, that is the planet that they found him on. It is uninhabited, at least not by any form of life of which he is aware. He shakes his head.

“I thought not, but it seemed important to ask,” Lehnsherr says. “Are you a crewmember from a damaged ship? Are there other men who need saving?”

He shakes his head once, then rests, then shakes it again. Two negatives.

Lehnsherr’s lips curve rather distinctly downward. 

Admittedly, it is rather unlikely, he thinks, that Lehnsherr will ask the correct questions. There are no satisfactory answers that he can give him. Not honestly, anyway. Lehnsherr seems to recognize the former, at least, even if he is not happy about it.

“You are quite the puzzle,” Lehnsherr says. “Found naked and gearless on the surface of a planet that is not capable of sustaining life – and yet here you are, healthier than many of the rest of my crew.” A harsh sort of sound – a laugh, he realizes belatedly. “I don’t even know what to ask. I don’t know where to begin.”

He watches Lehnsherr for a moment and then, when it is clear Lehnsherr does not intend to speak again, he rises up to his feet and walks to the small round window on the opposite wall. He points, fingertip only just brushing the glass. Taps, twice, and stares at Lehnsherr with as much forcefulness as he can manage without giving in to the draw of his telepathy.

“What?” Lehnsherr stands slowly and, after a second, comes to gaze out the window over his shoulder, at the galaxy that is spiraling around them, all the stars and planets spangled out across the black.

Lehnsherr looks to him again, so he touches the center of his chest and then points to the window once more.

Lehnsherr stares at him, finally a glimmer of comprehension dawning across his face. “You’re … from out there?”

He nods.

“From another world?”

A shake of the head.

Lehnsherr’s frown deepens even further. “I don’t understand.”

Of course. The ship people do not even know that his kind exist. Which is _precisely_ why he has always sought after lenience, when it came to how they intended to handle the ship people and their crimes. Crimes of ignorance, not of malice. He cannot regret defending them – not even now, when it has led to his exile.

There is no way to explain to Lehnsherr what he is, or how he came to be on this ship. So he just lets out a soft breath and shakes his head, looks away. 

“What are you?” Lehnsherr says, ignoring his obvious dismissal of the subject. “We are not far from Xiluodu. Are you Xi-ren? But still, there remains question of your survival ….” 

Lehnsherr seems as if he is all but speaking with himself, now, working through all possible permutations of the issue. He is frowning, his gaze turned back toward the window, out at the stars. A few seconds pass in silence – and then he is looking back, expression inscrutable.

“Are you a mutant?” Lehnsherr asks.

He considers the question. _Mutant_ , as a classification, has so many different meanings – anything from green eyes to an extra leg could be considered a mutation in its purest sense. But he suspects Lehnsherr means something quite specific by the word. He has heard of these mutants, in the minds of ship people. Some call them _homo sapiens superior_ , or _adaptive_ , or _aberration_. Less common now than they were, after the mass exterminations in the Eastern galaxies, but their vanishing numbers have only made the term more fraught. Ship people, he has learned, fear that which they do not understand. When they first colonized the outer planets, they quickly wiped out the indigenous inhabitants, through warfare or spread of disease or simple ‘self-defense.’ And when there were no aliens left to destroy they turned back upon themselves, fear consuming all bonds of trust and loyalty. 

Mutation would certainly explain why he was able to survive out there in space, in an environment so hostile to a standard ship person form. However, it could also put him at risk: he remembers vividly those glimpses he’s had of terror, of a blinding pain and that crawling sense of self-loathing in one’s gut, the slapped-cheek feel of betrayal when a loved one recoils in horror. 

Yet … the bright-haired ship man had said something, in the medical bay -- _maybe he’s a mutant … like Darwin...._

It might not mean anything. One could know mutants without being sympathetic to them, after all, but he suspects the assumption will be made either way – after all, there are few other explanations for a man who could lie naked in the cold ice-dust of Thanet, who could breathe in that toxic air without suffocating on it. 

So, he takes the risk. 

He nods.

Lehnsherr’s brows lift just a fraction of an inch and he takes a half-step closer to him before catching himself and coming to an abrupt halt, pushing his hands into his pockets, something indescribable flitting through his eyes. 

“I see,” Lehnsherr says – 

\- god, but Lehnsherr is almost certainly looking at him differently now - and he finds he misses his telepathy acutely – wishes more than anything that he could tell what Lehnsherr was thinking in this very moment, looking at him like _that_ , like –

Lehnsherr lifts a hand and there is the strange sense of something in the universe _tilting_ , a stumbling in his chest, and Lehnsherr’s entire desk lifts straight up into the air.

He stares, lips parting even though he has no desire to speak - does not think he would have words to say, even if he could - his breath going quick and shallow. It's incredible. It's ... amazing, unlike any ship person mutation he has ever encountered before. And the sheer _implications_ of it, the mere _possibilities_ -

“Metal,” Lehnsherr explains several seconds later, smug, clearly quite pleased with the reaction his display has garnered. The desk gently floats back to the floor, settling with a soft click. “Electromagnetism. I can influence it – or to a degree, at least. That’s my mutation.” He gestures toward the rest of the study, the doors, the ship. “We’re all mutants, here – except for Dr. MacTaggert, but she is sympathetic to our kind. You will find no prejudice among my crew.”

Lehnsherr waits for him to smile, and nod, before he continues on. “You will fit in well, I think,” he says. “We are going to have to find something to call you, however. ’Patient X’ doesn’t suit you.”

Lehnsherr’s hands slip back out of his pockets and he clasps them behind his back, taking on a stance that echoes of something almost military. (Perhaps, he thinks, this is a warship. He has not seen enough of its design, or spent enough time on the bridge, to tell.)

“I hope you do not take offense, but I don’t see what option we have but to just pick a name at random,” Lehnsherr says, “given that there is no clear way for you to communicate your true name to us.”

Of course. And it is not that it particularly matters, really; his people have no names. It is easy to convey, through telepathy, the _sense_ of someone’s mind – and that reflected mental signature is enough to make it clear who is being discussed.

He considers for a moment, and then looks down at the book he still grasps between his hands. He holds the book out toward Lehnsherr.

Lehnsherr takes it, glancing briefly at both the front and back covers. “ _The Origin of the Species_ ,” he reads, “by Charles Darwin.” Their gazes meet again, Lehnsherr’s eyes grey and clear. “One of my favorites, incidentally. Seeing as we already have a Darwin aboard … will ‘Charles’ do?”

 _Charles_. An uncommon name, these days. Old. It is as good as any other. Yes. Yes, it will do. 

He nods, smiles, and Lehnsherr passes the book back into his hands. 

“Good,” Lehnsherr says. There is a small hesitation, and then he adds: “I am sorry to cut this conversation short, but I must be getting back to the bridge. I’ll have one of the guest bunks prepared, and send someone down to meet you.”

He - Charles - nods.

Lehnsherr lingers, perhaps a second too long, before he goes. The lock on the door clicks shut behind him, and Charles is left alone with his silence.

\--


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the lovely **Tahariel** for her work as a beta.  <3

It happened like this:

The ship people had spun their web out far across the universe, tendrils of their influence creeping from the brightest galaxies to the most remote asteroid belts. Every rock bore the print of their touch, every star had felt the breath of their passage.

When the ship people sent their first satellite into space, the star people were happy.

The first time the ship people crept out onto the surface of their very own moon, the star people were happy.

When the ship people traversed the Milky Way, when they expanded out, toward the nearest dwarf galaxies, to Andromeda, to Sextans, onward and outward and ever-forward – the star people were happy.

When their home planet burned itself from the outside-in, and the ship people were forced to settle into colonies across other, younger planets – the star people mourned their loss, but they were happy for their new neighbors, happy to see them thriving again, happy to watch them grow.

The ship people were intelligent, but more than that, they were industrious: always seeking new adventures, new knowledge, chasing after that infinitely-vanishing horizon. That was their allure, as much as it would be their downfall.

The ship people fought among themselves often. They warred over genetic differences, over threats to power, over territory, over their dwindling resources. For resources _were_ dwindling, even as the ship people continued to expand into the Western galaxies. Energy was the primary concern: nuclear fission was too dangerous, solar too weak, water too scarce, fossil fuel and gas all quickly-deplenished.

And then the Shaw Corporation found the Farraday Cloud: a vast irregular galaxy some hundred billion light-years from the Earth-that-was, a galaxy bright with nine trillion stars – enough solar energy to power thousands of space stations for year. _If_ it could be harnessed.

The Shaw Corporation sent numerous mining and research vessels to the center of the Farraday Cloud. What they found there, in the midst of the sprawling, shimmering fabric of space and time, in the center of the Cloud’s every glittering star, surpassed their wildest dreams.

These stars had more energy, more raw and unharnessed power, than any other energy source that had ever been encountered.

And so the ship people mined them, they drained them dry, they sucked out all the power and all the glitter and all the star people’s shining life-force -

\- and then they flew away, flew away-away-away from the darkness, from the sucking cavernous pits, the supermassive black holes they left behind.

Dozens of galaxies followed, after. Once-brilliant colonies of stars, reduced to collections of lightless vortexes, destroying civilizations and condemning entire planet systems to an endless night.

They did not understand. They had no idea – no concept of who the star people were - they did not even know that they existed. Charles argued this point with the council: that the ship people didn’t know any better, that if they could just be made to understand, surely things would be different. Surely they would stop.

But, of course, when they tried to communicate with the ship people, speaking inside their minds, the ship people seemed incapable of understanding. They ignored them, and convinced themselves they were crazy, or imagining things, or dreaming. Or perhaps the ship people never even heard them speak; denial, after all, is a powerful weapon. 

They certainly did not listen. They continued to drill.

The council reached its decision, said: even if the ship people did know, they would not be likely to quit. What is the life of a star, when the ship people so despise the welfare of their own kin?

With the Eldest of Charles’s childhood long since spun out and faded, the decision was made by the oldest star in the Stryker system - one who had been burning for billions of years longer than all the rest.

This star told them: there is no stopping the ship people. Said: they will destroy us within a few million years, they will consume us all. We must save ourselves, even at the expense of their lives. We must end their race, before they end ours.

Charles argued, but he was not heard. The star people may communicate through the mind, but there are few among them with Charles’s particular gift – that of influencing minds, of guiding them – and Charles is dangerously strong for his age. He can still be controlled, now – can still be restrained – but for how long? How long until this child star’s obsession with the ship people and his reckless determination to protect them spelled the universe’s own undoing?

It was not immediate. It was a slow rise of suspicion, a gradual increase in paranoia; no one wanted to be too rash – but the stars were still dying, the ship people expanding ever-Westward – and when Charles himself tried to speak inside the ship people’s minds it only made the stars more cautious in his presence, fearing what he might do next – that he might turn his attentions to them instead, to control star minds as he did human.

And – they were right. Their paranoia was not so misguided, after all. 

Now, of course, Charles thinks he should have known better – but what else was he to do? The star people were planning the ship people’s extinction (“ _preventative measures_ ”) and time was running out. 

So Charles slipped silent into the mind of one on the council. He did not _change_ his thoughts, he did not _control_ him, he merely – suggested – that perhaps … perhaps, the council might reconsider. Perhaps they might wait another century. If they could communicate with just a single ship person and be believed, perhaps they could send him to the ship people’s own council as an ambassador, could find some proof the ship people could not ignore, some knowledge impossible for a human to know –

It did not end well.

He was discovered, of course, and the Phoenix expelled him from the council member’s mind, blocking him out with a terrible fire Charles still flinches to remember. 

If things had been a little different, maybe his punishment would not have been as severe – but the ship people were at war with themselves again, another massacre in the Eastern galaxies – and there were ships heading for the Shearon cluster, prepared to sample and to mine and to kill –

He was cast out.

Exiled, his mind forced into the body of a ship person and left for dust, and – the punishment must fit the crime, of course – cursed. 

He cannot speak, he cannot use his telepathy, he is bound to silence … a silence that, if broken, would immediately kill anyone close enough to hear his voice.

That, Charles thinks, is the cruelest part: that though he may live among the ship people now, that he has become one of them, he cannot warn them that the stars plan to destroy them. He can never tell them what he really is. He cannot spare them from their fate.

\--

“I heard you’re a mutant,” Darwin says when he shows up in Lehnsherr’s study fifteen minutes later to show Charles down to his bunk. “Least, that’s what they’re saying up on the bridge. Is it true?”

Darwin is a tall man, the tallest of the four ship people Charles has seen on this vessel – and by far the most relaxed, with his slow pace and his easy smile, though something about it does not seem to wear quite right on him. Charles finds himself thinking of the Nellis system, a whole galaxy that went unseen for thousands of years of space travel, ships passing by on the outskirts, close enough to touch it and yet never noticing it was there. 

Darwin is looking at him expectantly – and Charles nods.

“So it’s true that you don't talk, either,” Darwin says, looking oddly satisfied with his observation. “No matter. We’ll work something out. Sign language, maybe.” 

He grins and Charles attempts a small smile in return. They’re crossing into a new wing of the ship now – and the designer, whoever that was - the designer had built this ship such that there were windows stretching out along the port side: aluminosilicate glass, thick enough to withstand heat and shock, the quiet terror of space, and Charles is left feeling abruptly and - _fundamentally_ lost.

All the stars are so very far away.

“Hey,” Darwin says – and Charles realizes he has stopped, is standing stock-still in the middle of the hall, both hands latched around the railing, staring out into the dark, at the vanishingly small points of light shining in the far distance, the millions of galaxies he knows by heart but can no longer feel.

Space is large, it is infinite, but he has never felt so removed from everything he knows.

He drags his gaze away and looks to Darwin, presses a smile across his face – and the expression feels tight, but he is certain that’s just because he isn’t used to it yet, to this body and this face and the strange hollow feeling in his chest.

“You all right?” Darwin asks.

He drags the smile wider, nods. Darwin looks unconvinced, but he just shrugs a shoulder and gestures for Charles to come along, leading him down the corridor and into the next wing of the ship. 

“Sleeping quarters for the crew are on the second level,” Darwin says, taking him down via elevator. “You’ve seen the officer’s area. Well – I say ‘officers,’ but it’s really just Erik and his first mate, Emma Frost – you’ll meet her later, I’m sure – “ 

The crew quarters are nothing at all like the officers’ rooms. The hall is bare steel, the lights above are fluorescent; they are designed for functionality - for utility, not for comfort. 

Darwin stops halfway down the hall, between two opposite doors, and gestures. “Girls’ dorm – ” he points to the left, and then, “ – boys’ dorm,” to the right. “Standard privacy protocols in effect. There’s a common room at the end of the corridor, if you ever want to hang out in a mixed group.”

Darwin presses his thumb to the ID screen, which glows briefly green before the door unlocks. “We’ll get you set up for all that later,” Darwin says, nodding down at the print scanner. “For now, you can just settle in and get to know the place, yeah?”

The door slides open and Darwin lets him step through first. The dorm is just like all the other crew quarters Charles has seen: this one has twelve bunks, stacked in four groups of three levels, though some look uninhabited. Most of the cubbies are stuffed full to bursting, and where the drawers are too full to close and latch for hyperspace, they have been duct taped shut. The beds themselves, however, are approaching military standard: all the sheets carefully turned down, the pillows plumped, blankets folded neat and clean at the feet. 

“Take your pick,” Darwin says, nodding toward the beds. “Most of the middle bunks are free.”

“Well, wouldya look what the cat drug in.” 

Both Charles and Darwin look up; the speaker is a man - remarkably hairy, Charles thinks, even for a ship person – lounging on the top bunk, one arm slung over the railing and a lit cigar stuck between his lips. He puffs out a cloud of smoke and pulls the cigar away between two fingers, using it to gesture toward Charles. 

Charles startles - and immediately finds himself reaching for the end-threads of his thoughts again, biting back a sound of pain when the razor wire around his telepathy sinks in deeper to the core of him, shreds the outer surface of his mind. He forces himself to look at the man – just look, without trying to press further, without greeting him in the only way that feels familiar. A muscle starts to twitch in his eyelid from the effort.

“You the alien?” the man says.

“You should put that thing out, Logan,” Darwin interjects. “You’re not even supposed to – how did you get it on _board?_ ”

“That’d be tellin’, wouldn’t it?” Logan says. Even so, he stubs the cigar out on the heel of his shoe, shaking the ash off the side of his bunk. “Like I said, kid – are you the alien everyone’s been talking about?”

Charles shrugs, the gesture small and careful.

Logan frowns. “Hmm. And what do we call you, alien boy? You got a name?”

“Charles,” Darwin answers for him. “Commander says we’re calling him ‘Charles.’”

“Charles,” Logan repeats slowly, drawing the vowel out long, as if tasting the name on the tip of his tongue. “Creative. Sounds like Lehnsherr’s making a real pet out of you.”

It’s Charles’s turn to frown now, something in him recoiling a bit reflexively at the term, even as he reminds himself that he doesn’t … _belong_ to Lehnsherr … that while he may be stuck on Lehnsherr’s ship for the time being, while he may have lost his family and his world, he is still – at least - owner of himself. 

“Don’t be a dick, Logan,” Darwin says. 

Logan grins. “I’m just being friendly. C’mon, Chuck. You can sleep here.” He jerks a thumb toward the empty middle bunk below him. “It’s all yours.”

Charles considers it. Logan is certainly … abrasive, as they go, but he clearly has some sort of influence on the ship, if he’s able to get away with keeping cigars on board. Influence, or a special skill for flying under the Commander’s attentive radar. And it would be wise, to have an ally on board. While Charles doubts accepting this offer would go so far as to gain him Logan’s trust and friendship, blatantly denying it could do an immediate and irreparable harm. 

So he steps forward and grasps the rungs of the ladder at the foot of the beds, pulling himself up onto the second bunk. 

“Your funeral,” Darwin says. “Logan talks in his sleep. Among other things.”

“Watch it, bub.”

Darwin just smiles, though the expression is directed primarily toward Charles. “I have to get going,” he says. “I’m not on break for a few hours yet. Logan will keep you company for now - and you’ll meet the others later, I’m sure.”

He lifts one hand – and it takes Charles a second to realize it’s some kind of valedictory gesture, and mimic it. 

Darwin seems content with that. He turns his attention back up to Logan, pointing. “And get rid of those cigars before the next inspection, if you know what’s good for you” he says. 

Logan touches two fingers to his temple in a semblance of a salute as Darwin exits, door magnetizing itself shut again behind him.

Charles finds himself sitting on the edge of his bunk for several minutes after Darwin leaves – and he keeps expecting Logan to say something else, to start up a conversation – but Logan never does. At last, Charles pulls his legs up onto the bed and leans back, stretching out lengthwise along the mattress, testing out the feel of the springs beneath his spine and the pillow supporting his head. 

He hadn’t paid much attention, when he was in the medical bay, to the specifics of it – how it felt to bring his body’s orientation from vertical to horizontal, what it’s like to have skin – actual _skin_ , skin that can detect the subtle shift of cotton fabric beneath his weight, the warmth where his back presses against the bed contrasted with the cool breeze on his face from the open air con vents. He would have expected it to feel … constricting, claustrophobic, like being restrained to something far smaller than himself. It doesn’t. It’s – grounding, in its way. It’s like finding a new gravity. One very different from what he is used to, but no less a part of himself.

Above him, Logan clicks on his lighter, and Charles can actually _hear_ the smolder of the tobacco in his cigar when he holds the flame to its tip – can smell the smoke wafting down from the upper bunk, harsh and sickly and fascinating.

“Get some sleep, kid,” Logan says.

Charles opens his eyes – eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed – to gaze up at the underside of Logan’s bunk. 

Logan shifts, his mattress creaking with the movement, and a moment later he adds: “You’re gonna need it.” 

\--


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The very talented **seealpsee** drew some beautiful [fanart](http://david8shead.tumblr.com/post/30835094390/hey-heres-some-fanart-for-the-starry-sky-and-the) for this piece! It’s seriously lovely, you should check it out. 
> 
> Thanks once more to **Tahariel** for her help as a beta! 
> 
> I sprinkled a few references to things I love throughout this chapter (and some of the preceding ones). Let me know if you figure any of them out. Hint: one of them is an H.P. Lovecraft reference!

Dinner begins promptly at eight.

It is the one time of day when almost everyone has a break – there’s a single ship person assigned to man the bridge, and the rest of them get to retire down to the commissary, to share a meal.

At least, that’s how Logan explained it to Charles – though, admittedly, in a somewhat less eloquent fashion.

“They’ll be like a flock of twelve-year-old-girls, when they see you,” was the other thing Logan said. “Just stay cool, don’t get your panties in a knot. They’ll hafta get used to you eventually.”

Charles nods, and sets to the task of reinforcing all the defenses holding in his own mind. He takes care to walk half a step behind Logan; he doesn’t want Logan to see the look on his face as he swallows down the hot, stinging liquid rising up from his stomach. At least the pain is not as blinding as it had been the first time. Perhaps he is starting to habituate, slowly growing numb to it over time. Even so, twisting that barbed wire into his own mind feels like lancing a half-healed wound - sickening, with shadows of the old pain clinging to the tail of the new.

After a while, things dull … fading to a constant, bruised sort of throb in the core of him. But at least his vision is starting to clear, and his legs feeling a bit less fragile beneath his weight.

“All right,” Logan says, once they reach the end of the hall. “Brace yourself.”

And then he is pushing open a steel door, and ushering them in to chaos.

There are only six of them, Charles realizes after counting them off – but it certainly seems like more at first, in the moment when he steps into the commissary and into the fray. Six of them, all screaming at each other, all fighting to be heard over everyone else, gesturing with forks and foodstuffs, to add emphasis.

“ _No_ ,” one of them insists – “it’s just regular ice cream, only they freeze it afterward, in liquid nitrogen. It’s –“

“Yeah? How do they get it into the little balls, then? I’m telling you, it’s made that way, it’s gotta be.”

“There is not a _freezer_ in the _universe_ that could get milk and sugar that fucking hard, you _idiot_.”

A slam of cutlery onto the tabletop, the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor.

“Who even cares, all of you?” someone else says. “It’s disgusting, either way –“

Logan clears his throat.

It’s not that loud, all things considering, and yet, somehow, the entire room immediately goes silent.

Everyone is looking at them.

No. Everyone is looking at _Charles._

“Oh,” someone says. “It’s –“

“Charles,” MacTaggert interrupts, rising from her spot at the table, swift and graceful. “All of you, this is Charles. He’ll be staying with us until we reach Sihwa. Charles, this is the crew of the _IGF Arkham.”_

There comes a chorus of half-mumbled “Nice to meet you’s” - along with a few “Hey’s.” 

Silence, again. For a moment Charles wonders if maybe Logan got it wrong, if his presence is just going to stilt conversation instead of stimulating it.

And then –

“Here, sit by me.” 

It’s a ship woman – or so he assumes, has to assume, as no human ship would ever consent to allow an alien amongst its crew. (In fact, Charles is pretty sure the ship people have devised regulations against that very potentiality.) But, ship person or otherwise … she is easily the most beautiful creature Charles has ever witnessed: slim and sun-eyed, with skin as blue as Orion’s brightest star. 

He’s staring … and the ship woman notices, of course - though all she does is laugh. A moment later, her skin seems to _shift_ \- rippling from the part of her vibrant hair down to her toes – and then the blue-skinned woman is gone, replaced by a younger girl, a paler girl, completely unrecognizable from the person she had been just moments before.

“Better?” she asks, cocking one brow.

He looks for a moment, and considers – but, no. He thinks he can understand, how this shape is beautiful, but he still prefers the other. He shakes his head, and then shrugs. _Whichever you prefer._

The ship woman gives him a careful, appraising sort of look, but a moment later she shifts back into the original, blue form.

And, again, Charles finds himself staring. Is it an illusion? Some other psionic mutation? Or is she actually changing her appearance – changing, perhaps, her entire _body_ …? How far does it extend? Is it superficial, or could she morph everything, down to the tiniest parts of her being? 

He forces himself to drop his gaze, and to sit down in the empty chair next to the blue woman, though a bit hesitantly. The others around the table are all looking at him the same way he had been looking at the blue girl just a moment before. He feels exposed, in a way he is unused to. Like they have peeled back all the layers of his flesh and opened him to the beating, pulsing heat in the center of him.

“I’m Raven,” the blue ship woman says. “My mutation is shapeshifting. What’s yours? Adaptation?”

He attempts a tight sort of smile, lifting one shoulder – the response is ambiguous at best, but Raven seems pleased with it. 

“Cool,” she says. “You and Darwin should go at it sometime - winner takes all.”

Charles’s gaze flickers over toward Darwin at that; the man just grins and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. Charles sincerely hopes he is not actually expected to go up against Darwin’s mutation. He isn’t sure what the parameters of this body are – if he would actually be able to adapt to any circumstance, or if it was just space – just some relic of his past, lingering for a few moments before it, too, faded.

“You know Alex, of course,” MacTaggert says, nodding toward the star-haired man from the medical bay. “And me. Moira. No mutation, just here to help.”

That seems to be the cue for everyone else to speak up, the other crew members introducing themselves in turn. There’s Azazel: communications officer with a teleportation ability. Hank McCoy and Scott Summers are the two scientists-in-residence. (“It’s a research mission,” Hank had explained, and he’d started into what was shaping up to be a rather long-winded technical explanation of their aims before the others cut him off.) 

Darwin is navigation, and Alex is a weapons systems engineer - which Charles is assured is just a formality - Federation-mandated because the _IGF Arkham_ was a military-grade vessel, and someone had to make sure all those expensive guns didn’t get lost in intergalactic space. Raven is an engineer as well, as it turns out, though she does quite a bit more of the practical work - making sure all their systems are up and running, writing the programs which support Darwin’s codes, and fixing any mechanical failures before they happen.

Lehnsherr, and his XO Emma Frost, are conspicuously absent.

“So, Charles, tell us where you’re from,” Raven says, once all the introductions have been made.

“Uh,” Alex says, “he can’t talk. Remember?”

“And? Darwin, help me out here.” 

Darwin reaches into his bag and pulls out an entire star chart - a map of their present galaxy that, when unfolded, could easily span the surface of the entire table. Darwin brings it over, holds it up on the wall behind Charles.

“Just point to your home planet,” Raven says. “Here’s Thanet, see?” She taps a small ink dot. “That’s where we found you. And there’s Xiluodu, and Obrigheim. And here’s Haipu, right on the edge, which is where I grew up.” 

Charles stands and draws closer to the map. He was right: it displays the Faria galaxy only. Charles’s home is far away, far beyond the edges of what is drawn out here. 

He shakes his head, and taps a spot on the blank wall next to the map.

“What?”

He taps again.

“You’re from … a different galaxy?”

He nods.

“Oh.” Raven seems disappointed. “Well, _that’d_ be like looking for a Westford needle in the LEO. It’d take a fucking century.” She folds the map up again and passes it back to Darwin. 

“All right, then,” Logan says, from where he’s taken a seat near the head of the table. “If you are all done interrogatin’ the kid, can we get back to the food?”

Charles finds he has a whole new appreciation for his bunkmate.

They sit back down, and someone passes Charles a plate filled with - well, to be frank, he has no idea what any of it is, but the very sight of it makes something constrict in the pit of his stomach. He … wants it. He doesn’t think he has wanted anything before. Not like this, at least. Not … _viscerally._

He knows what a fork is, academically, at least – but it takes a few moments of watching the ship people use them before he grasps the mechanics of it - and how to make the movement look graceful and natural, like he’d been doing it all his life, scooping a small mound of food onto the tines and bringing it up to his mouth. 

Eating turns out to entail an array of sensations so bizarre that, when he’s finished, Charles is still not entirely sure he enjoyed it. The beginning he liked – when the food entered his mouth, and he chewed, and … _tasted_ it, experienced the _essence_ of a potato or a roasted turkey, when he realized what these things are, what they represent to the ship people: hedonic, and nourishing, both at once. 

He was less pleased by the way it felt to swallow it – how the back of his throat convulsed slightly, the feeling of food sliding down his gullet, the idea of it sinking down and down and down, plopping heavy into his stomach. It felt entirely base, and vulgar, and … _human._

But he manages it. He gets through the meal, and finishes everything on his plate. He listens to the others talk, he smiles, nods, and manages to eke out a crude sort of communication with them. It’s not what he’s used to – it’s not what his life used to be – but it’s something, at least. It’s progress.

\--

That night, Charles lies in his bunk, listening to the dull rumble of Logan’s snores overhead and Alex muttering in his sleep across the room. 

He had tried to sleep, when he first went to bed. He tried blanking out his mind and letting himself simply drift off, fade out. But it was impossible. He could not relax this body, couldn’t forget the way he felt, trapped inside something so small and fragile – the heavy weight of his own limbs atop the mattress, the expansion of his chest every time he took a breath, the way his eyelashes fanned against his cheek.

He knew why this was supposed to be a punishment. No stars ever took human form; to exist within an object of such small mass was torture. With the inclusion of the limitations placed on his telepathy, Charles suspects the council predicts he will go mad in a matter of days – that this exile is in truth an execution - for all other stars who ever attempted to live in the body of a ship person soon turned against themselves, destroyed their forms.

Charles thinks he is beginning to feel some of that now. The sense of his skin being too tight, stretching out thin over a swollen core, too-hot. How long, he wonders, until he can no longer stand it - until he can no longer hold himself in – until he burns himself up from the inside out, until his mind bursts free and kills everyone it can reach? 

Lying here, frozen in place, is only making it worse. It is as if he has live electricity sizzling in the marrow of his bones. 

He has to move.

Carefully, so as not to disturb any of the others, Charles crawls down to the ladder at the foot of his bunk and swings himself down to the floor. Pulling on the foot-clothing Moira had given him before, he sneaks out of the dorm on softened steps, glancing behind to make sure the others are still curled up under their blankets, undisturbed. He props the door open with the leg of a chair as he goes; he still doesn’t have an ID card, and he’ll need a way to get back in upon his return.

The ship seems different at night. Well – for one, someone has changed the light settings, turning them down dim, bluish. The idea was make it easier to sleep, Charles suspects. The ship people find it difficult to sleep except in darkness. 

He heads up the hall and back toward the elevator. He gets off at every floor and walks the empty corridors, plotting out the layout of the ship in his head. It is far larger than he had initially believed; he has to take care not to get lost in the winding maze of rooms. 

It seems strange, that they have so few crewmembers working on such a large vessel. Generally, when he has come across ships of this size crashed in space, there have been dozens upon dozens – even hundreds – of bodies found inside, and yet it appears that Lehnsherr has only manned his ship with the first- and second-level officer staff. No support crew, no lower-level officers. And only one of each office, as well: one pilot. One communications expert, one astro engineer. 

Maybe, Charles thinks, it is their mutations which make the difference. Perhaps eleven mutants can accomplish as much as a hundred and eleven others. Even more relevant is the fact that this is a military-grade ship being used for non-military purposes. Without the combat jobs, what else is left?

Still … it lends an almost eerie sense to the ship, this late at night. Especially when Charles cannot use his ability – when he cannot feel the presence of anyone else on board. It makes the halls seem as empty and dead as wreckage floating through the void.

He takes the elevator up one more level. He has started, now, to lose track of where he is – and while he is certain he will eventually find his way back to the dorms, he doesn’t expect the return path to be quick or easy. 

Not, of course, that he is in any great hurry to return – there is nothing waiting for him there but more silence, and the constant effort of keeping himself away from the lure of dreams that aren’t his own.

He trails his fingertips along the wall, heading starboard. This seems to be another residentially-oriented part of the ship, though this time there was no code to let him off the elevator. He tests the knob of one of the doors; it’s locked. Not in use, then. Dorms for other crew, crew the _Arkham_ doesn’t have.

He wanders further down and, when he turns a corner –

Someone’s here.

One of the doors up ahead is open; the interior room casts a pool of amber light out across the carpeted floor. 

He should go. He should turn around and sneak back to the dormitories as quickly as he can. 

Should, but doesn’t. 

He finds himself moving forward - slowly, carefully – and keeping to the shadows. As he draws closer, he can hear … well, he is not quite sure what the sound is. Something … scratchy, and thin. Faint. And then the rustle of movement, of a weight shifting against a solid object. He presses himself against the wall and pauses – tries to breathe, short and shallow little breaths, silent, _silent_ \- before he peers around the frame of the door.

The room is full of books. Books, and maps, tacked up on the walls, rolled out on the tables, pinned down at the corners with misshapen blobs of metal. Lehnsherr is sitting at a desk in the middle of the room, curled over several open documents. He has a pen in hand and is writing, making notes in the margins of his papers. 

Charles isn’t sure what time it is, but he knows that it must be late, if all the rest of the crew are asleep. And Lehnsherr’s not on bridge duty. Insomnia? Or some other motivation?

Lehnsherr has taken off his uniform jacket and slung it over the back of his chair, has rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. He’s quite fit, Charles notices, especially for a non-military Commander. His body type is slim, and not dissimilar to what Charles understands is considered the physical ideal for male ship people. 

“You can come in, you know.” Lehnsherr speaks - and it startles Charles enough that he has to clap one hand over his mouth to keep himself from crying out.

Lehnsherr twists around in his chair to face him. Charles steps into the doorway, clasping his hands behind his back in an attempt to resist the sudden urge to fidget. After a long moment he tilts his head to the side and lifts his eyebrows, inquisitive.

“I heard your footsteps,” Lehnsherr says. “Practice sliding your feet along the floor instead of walking. It’s quieter.”

He gestures for Charles to come in closer – so Charles steps forward, slowly, drawing near to the desk … and to Lehnsherr. He stops with two feet left between them. Lehnsherr’s brows have gone up, and for a second Charles wonders if it’s too close - or not close enough. The eccentricities of ship person etiquette are still foreign to him.

However, Lehnsherr makes no move to beckon him closer or to wave him away, which says something, at least. Charles stays where he is. 

It’s a moment before Lehnsherr speaks again. “I hope you are adjusting well to living on the ship,” he says. “I understand my crew can be quite … rambunctious.”

Charles stares at him, not quite sure what response Lehnsherr is expecting – if it’s a joke and he wants Charles to smile, if it’s a simple comment, or if this is some sort of test. Charles settles for lifting one shoulder and one corner of his mouth, then shaking his head, just slightly.

“Good. Then, I hope you’re resilient. It’s a long journey from here to Sihwa, so you will have to simply put up with them in the interim.” 

Lehnsherr’s shirt has a stand collar, but the first few buttons are undone; Charles tries to keep his gaze away from the small slice of exposed skin. Ship people are so very concerned with their modesty, after all - and he doesn’t think Lehnsherr would appreciate the attention. Even so. It is distracting. 

But then, everything on this _ship_ is distracting. The design of it, the precise purpose of each room, the evidence of human industry etched into the very walls. This ship is so much more alive than those Charles has explored in the past. It is more than a matter of corpses on the bridge or the burnt-out lights of a soundboard. It is the feeling of _use_ , of being cared-for, of having purpose. This ship … this ship, Charles can tell, has great _purpose._

Lehnsherr is frowning at him, now. Charles frowns back, trying to figure out what he did or said wrong – but then –

“I don’t generally allow visitors on my ship,” Lehnsherr tells him. “And I will not make an exception for you. As long as you’re here, you will make yourself useful. Do you have any skills?”

 _Skills?_ Charles is not entirely sure what Lehnsherr means by that. 

“Do you have any particular set of knowledge which may prove useful for any of the functions of this ship?” Lehnsherr clarifies.

An absurd question, really. Charles has infinitely more knowledge than any one ship person – he knows the secrets of physics, of the particles which knit worlds together. But that is not exactly what Lehnsherr wants, nor is it something Charles can give. Even his telepathy is useless here, unless Lehnsherr wishes to use him as some sort of assassin. No, he has no skills. None Lehnsherr can use, anyway.

But … then, that’s not entirely true, is it? All those centuries Charles has spent exploring the empty shells of ships floating out in the void, taking them apart and piecing them back together again – 

He knows how ships work. He could tell you how a warp engine works – and his own star was made of hydrogen, the primary gas used in rocket thrust. He knows how the gas burns, and how a ship stays protected from it. He knows how to make electricity, how to increase and decrease voltage, and how to direct it.

So, he nods - and then glances round the library, seeking some way of communicating without words. Lehnsherr has several books open on his desk, but none of them seem to be what he needs. 

Charles walks further into the room. He shuffles through some of the papers on a side table, examining the diagrams and charts tacked on the wall. There is too much here, and he can’t read anything written on any of the documents, or in any of the books. He wishes he could. And he’ll have to learn, he realizes, if he is going to be living in this body for any significant length of time. He cannot expect to stay on this ship, to be surrounded by so many ship people, and be incapable of conveying more than the simplest ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ 

But at last, he finds a folded-up blueprint of a star ship and brings it back to where Lehnsherr sits. He lays it out on the table and circles the engine room with his forefinger.

“Engineering? No. …Mechanics?”

Charles nods again.

“Good. That’s settled, then. You will assist Raven in whatever she needs, reporting to her at 0800 hours.” Lehnsherr folds the blueprint back up and hands it to Charles. “You can keep that,” he says. “It might come in handy.” 

He means for explaining concepts and locations, Charles understands after a second. Lehnsherr’s right about that much. Charles needs all the assistance that the Commander and his crew are willing to lend.

“You will like this ship, I think,” Lehnsherr says. His gaze has trailed off from Charles’s, now; he is looking instead at the charts spread out on the desk before him, fingers smoothing against the paper, gliding over the spiky scrawl of his own calligraphy enscribed next to the clean lines and smooth slopes of … is that a tank of some sort? No, it can’t be, it has thrusters –

“It has been my ship, for almost a decade, now. I became a Captain in the Federation Fleet at age twenty-two. Quite young, even during the war. This ship was my first Command.” 

Charles thinks he detects the slight curve of a smile to Lehnsherr’s lips when the man looks back up – but he may be mistaken.

“And it’s mine even now. I’ve improved it. You'll find it is markedly different from standard military issue, in a number of respects, wherever I found my gift might prove practically useful. …I'll be interested to see if you notice them.”

He is clearly waiting for some kind of response. Charles smiles and pushes his hands into his pockets.

Lehnsherr’s gaze drops with the movement. “Oh,” he says. “Yes. Remind me to see about getting you a set of real clothing. You can't wander around the ship for weeks in medic scrubs, not if you’ll be working in the engine room. You’re about –“ his eyes flit back up again to drag down the full length of Charles’s form, eyeing the shoulders, hips, and legs in particular “ – five foot seven, one hundred and fifty pounds, am I correct? Thirty-four inch inseam, give or take.”

Well, Lehnsherr would know better than he would. So, Charles just nods.

Lehnsherr seems pleased. “Excellent. Perhaps you can wear some of Summers’ things; you look to be around the same build. He is a good deal taller, but it's the best option available. …Now. I have work to do. Do you know your way back to the dormitory?”

Charles shakes his head, heat rising in his cheeks. It seems abrupt – and he had not expected to be told to leave so quickly, even if he knows, on some level, that Lehnsherr doesn’t owe him anything. Still. He feels … he doesn’t know what he feels.

“Hand me those.” Lehnsherr extends his hand palm-up, and Charles passes over the blueprints. Lehnsherr flips through the packet to the sixth page and marks an ‘X’ over one of the rooms. “We are here.” He turns another two pages and writes a second mark. “This is where you want to go. Can you manage that?”

Charles gets the sense that the only acceptable answer is ‘yes.’ 

“Then you’re dismissed.” 

Lehnsherr turns back to his charts, shifting round in his chair and leaning over the desk once more, scribbling away again as if he had never been distracted in the first place. 

Charles lingers for a moment, half-expecting Lehnsherr to say something, something else – though he doesn’t know what. Eventually, he takes a step back, then another, and finally turns to go. As he walks down the dim corridors again, using the blueprints to guide him, finger following along the path between Lehnsherr’s two sharp checks, he realizes – he doesn’t feel the electricity, anymore. That fearful swelling beneath his skin is diminished – not gone, he senses, but … muted, all the same. 

And – strange, the human body, the way it works, all its exotic complexities – when he returns to his bed and curls up beneath the sheets, when he closes his eyes and blots out his mind … he sleeps. 

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raven’s joke about looking for Westford needles in the LEO (LEO = low Earth orbit) is a reference to a project run by Lincoln Laboratory at MIT in the 1960s. It’s a pretty funny/dumb story if you want to [check it out](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford). Suffice to say, it’s an impossible task, and this is Raven’s nerdy astro engineer way of saying that finding Charles’s home planet, out of all the galaxies in the known universe, would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to **Tahariel** for her tireless work as a beta. You're a star. :)
> 
> Thanks also to **Kannibal** , for her incredibly detailed + helpful feedback!
> 
> Sorry for the delay on posting! Real life happened. This chapter also ended up being the longest yet. (Come to think of it, the chapters are getting increasingly long. Uh-oh.)

Days pass.

He does not grow accustomed to his human form.

It sits heavily on his mind – the weight of his own form pressing in around him, the sense of his own mass, the way it still startles him every time he brushes up against someone else by accident – and their bodies meet, flesh or fabric sliding against his skin and sending him reeling back, breath gone thin, rattled down to his very bones – that unnerving sense which would then persist throughout the rest of the day, simmering just beneath his surface.

He misses home.

It feels, sometimes, as if something fundamental has been carved out of him. It leaves him raw and gutted, his thoughts and emotions seeping from his pores because he cannot put them into words, cannot spill them any other way. He begins to spend his free hours curled up on his bunk, face turned toward the wall. He recites the names of the stars to himself – his lips move, but there is no sound. Even alone, he dares not risk it – no matter how badly he wants to, no matter how much he needs to hear the sound of his own voice. With his telepathy so repressed, the rest of his mind feels muted as well, and he can barely follow the train of his own thoughts. It is as if they’ve been cast into the orbit of some distant sun – spinning round and round and round but too far away for him to grasp – out of reach, and he doesn’t know how he feels about anything anymore. 

He worries that if he acknowledges his emotions, he will project them. And then this will just be another empty ship floating through space, littered with corpses.

Raven is concerned about him. Out of all the rest, she is the one with whom he spends the most time – and he can tell she notices the way his limbs are a little heavier with each passing day, how he moves more slowly about the engine room, his mind taking just a little too long to click over from question to solution. As if she can look at him, and see what he has lost. 

One night she slips into the men’s dormitory after supper. He is lying on his bed again, facing away from the door. He hears her climb the ladder to the middle bunk, then feels her weight pressing down on his mattress - while he cannot use his telepathy he has learned to use his other senses to identify presence – and Raven always smells faintly of engine oil, staining her jacket and ground into the whorls on the tips of her fingers.

“Are you okay?” she whispers, one hand on his upper arm, warm and heavy through the fabric of his shirt.

He turns toward her. Her features are cast into shadow but her eyes still glow, grounding him. She presses on his arm, just a little harder, and repeats the question. He nods.

“Are you sure?”

He nods again. She looks uncertain, for a moment, and he thinks maybe she doesn’t quite believe him. But after a while she pushes off the edge of the bed and stands, fingers trailing down his arm and then away.

“If you want to talk about it – well, ‘talk’ – you know what I mean – I’m here. All right?”

He smiles, dragging the corners of his lips up, baring his teeth. She looks away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says. 

She leaves, and Charles hates the way the room feels no emptier without her – the way the entire universe feels just as barren and lifeless as before. His mind twitches against its binds and then wilts away at the now-familiar razor sting. Too tired to keep trying. It’s probably for the best. 

But he does wonder how long a star can live – why it even exists at all - if it no longer gives off light.

\--

Weeks pass.

He falls into a certain set of habits. Wake up, morning rituals – ship people, he finds, are naturally unclean, and must take great care with their hygiene in order to maintain health and social status – and then eat, then work in the engine room, eat, work, eat again, and spend his evenings wandering the ship. He sometimes wants to return to the library where he came across Lehnsherr that very first night, but he never does. 

He sees the Commander primarily for work-related purposes. Lehnsherr drops by the engine room every now and then to see Raven, and apparently to ensure that all systems are still running at optimum level. Charles learns that Lehnsherr was an engineer before he was military – and it’s something Charles had known already, from the trim on Lehnsherr’s uniform - but seeing Lehnsherr in action, discussing specs with Raven or typing out the code for a new script he wants to run through the interface … that’s a different experience entirely. 

Lehnsherr’s _good_. So good, in fact, that Charles finds himself wondering why he gave up engineering for something like military academy. Not that being a Commander isn’t challenging in itself – it requires a certain strategic intelligence that Lehnsherr seems to be very adept at – but it’s not _analytic._ And Lehnsherr is fundamentally analytic. 

Quite possibly the only person on the ship who intrigues Charles more than Lehnsherr is Lehnsherr’s executive officer. Emma Frost. 

Charles is on board ship for almost three weeks before he even lays eyes on her. One might expect the first mate of any kind of space-faring vessel to be well at-home in an engine room, but Frost navigates the area with a delicacy that borders on disdainful, giving the machinery a wide berth. Perhaps she does not want to stain her white XO uniform.

“Charles, I presume,” she says – and she somehow manages to look elegant even while stepping over a particularly large pipe exposed on the floor – a feat which usually proves ungainly even for the most agile of mechanics. 

Raven has gone up to the bridge to check in with the on-duty officers about some plumbing problem the ship’s been having – ‘ _not_ my area of expertise,” she had informed him, scowling – and Charles is left alone in the engine room, peering through a stack of the ship’s schematics, trying to further familiarize himself with its electrical system. 

He gives Frost a small nod of affirmation. She smiles and moves closer; something recoils in the pit of Charles’s stomach, like a warning. He doesn’t trust her. He doesn't know anything about her – he has never touched her mind – but he doesn’t trust her. Maybe it’s the way she is approaching him, steady and purposeful. Or maybe it’s the way she has him backed into a corner: his spine to a wall and Emma Frost between him and his only exit.

He’s probably overreacting. He simply has not yet had time to get used to it, the strange animalistic impulses these ship people have. Vestigial reflexes to fight or to flee. It seems silly that his body should be concerned with flight, when all he must do is speak and any threat would be dead in an instant.

“You’re younger than I had expected,” she says, pausing a few feet away to cross her arms across her chest, making no secret of the way her gaze drops down, assessing his form along with his face. 

When he doesn’t answer, the careful smile on her mouth fades slightly – and then she is stepping forward again, reaching out to touch his cheek with one cool fingertip. Charles’s lips part and he almost speaks – on instinct, he almost opens his mouth and kills her right there – because the contact alone suddenly makes it that much more difficult to keep his mind restrained. He can feel his thoughts clawing up against the wires he’s wrapped around them, struggling for release, every atom in his skin gone electric. 

If any of it shows on his face, Frost does not seem to notice. “Do you know what my mutation is, sugar?” she draws the tip of her finger down along his cheekbone, toward the corner of his mouth. She stops there, and her hand falls away – but only to then curl around the back of his neck, a gesture that might have seemed affectionate, had it come from anyone else. She doesn’t wait for him to respond, this time. “I’m a telepath. It means that I can read your mind.” A brief pause. “Or, I could – if you had a mind to read. But _you_ ….” She smiles again – and this time the expression is odd, crooked. “Nothing. A blank space. A dead zone in the middle of this ship. I’ve been trying to figure you out for weeks.”

Alarm bursts through Charles’s system, and if there were any part of him still thinking about the schematic he’s reading or Raven’s plumbing problem, it is now focused completely on the ship woman in front of him. It’s a war of desires – to see what Frost knows (or thinks she knows) – to get away from her as soon as possible – and a quiet fascination with the idea of ship people with telepathic ability. 

It’s a mutation he has never heard of before … that there might be humans who could communicate in the way of the stars. Would it even hurt her, if he reached out with his mind? Is she immune to the curse by virtue of her ability? But as soon as the possibility presents itself, he realizes – no. Telepathy does not exclude her from the curse any more than the capacity to speak does. It somehow manages to feel like a loss, even though Charles has no idea what it is he’s losing.

“What are you?” Frost murmurs – and her thumb shifts upward, caressing the back of his neck, slipping just slightly into his hair. “An android?”

She’s feeling for a USB port, he realizes. The latest android models have the port located at the back of the skull, obscured by the hair for enhanced realism. He watches the brief flicker of confusion and disappointment on her face when her fingers slide over nothing but smooth and unbroken flesh.

“I’ve never met anyone I couldn’t read before,” she says, her hand dropping back down to her side. “Tell me what you are.”

He presses his lips tight together – still worried he might give in to that bizarre urge, and speak.

“Don’t play that game with me,” Frost snaps. “I know you can talk. _Tell me._ ”

He holds her gaze and bites down on the edge of his tongue until he tastes metal. It hurts. Badly. But he does not answer.

He expects Frost to react, somehow – to attack him, or threaten him – but instead she simply pushes that smile back onto her mouth and takes a step back. 

“The Commander relies on me, you know,” she says. “To keep his crew safe. To keep my touch on all of their minds, and make sure nothing goes amiss. The only reason – the _only_ reason – you are still onboard this ship is because I did not tell Lehnsherr to kick you off it. So if he knew that I could not read you … that I had no idea whether you could be trusted with his men … how long do you think you would stay alive?”

She leaves him with that, stepping back over the pipe and between the towers of machinery, disappearing out the door. He listens to the sound of her heels on the floor, receding into the distance. He waits until there is silence again before he lets the tension finally leech out of his spine – and he leans against the wall behind him, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. 

Now, that … that _was_ a threat. He might be unfamiliar with ship culture, but he can recognize that much. Frost is not going to be content until she has some kind of answer she deems satisfactory. Whether she would really tell Lehnsherr he was not to be trusted…. He doesn’t know the woman at all, but he’d argue it was likely. She has no reason to keep him here, after all. Even Lehnsherr doesn’t _really_ need a mechanic; the _Arkham_ had been sailing just fine without one before he turned up. He is here on the Commander’s hospitality – and Frost’s. 

So, then. That leaves him with a limited number of options. Ideally, he would be able to explain the truth to Frost, and perhaps make a petition on behalf of the stars as well, to stop drilling in the far galaxies. Unfortunately, such an explanation is inescapably complex. There is no way to convey this without the use of language. 

The second option is to come up with an alternative explanation. If he can convince Frost he is telling the truth about his mutism, that might be a start. But again – no easy way to do that. Not if she is already predisposed to skepticism. And it would still not account for her inability to sense his mind. 

He could always try to say that he’s an android, after all. Maybe some ultra-advanced model that can charge wirelessly and transfer all data through the cloud. Or some other alien life form that is immune to the effects of telepathy.

A quiet voice in the back of his mind suggests that he could simply get rid of Frost, herself, but he ignores it. That is not an option. Frost has done nothing wrong; she is simply trying to protect her own. If she would make his own life forfeit to do so – well, it is nothing more severe than what the stars already plan for the ship people, and even then, a single death does not hold a candle to the genocide of an entire species. 

Option one or two, then. The truth, or some simpler alternative. Either way, this is going to be a challenge. 

What he needs … what he _needs_ is to find some way to communicate, using language, without speech. He glances back down at the schematics spread out on the table before him – the strange, block-like characters, indecipherable to him but perfectly legible to the ship people. He needs to learn how to write.

He touches one of the characters, covering it up entirely with the pad of his finger. It’s a useless endeavor, if he doesn’t even know how to read. He wouldn’t know where to begin. He could mimic the writing, but that would not give it meaning.

A tutor, then. He supposes he could ask Raven. He imagines she would quickly become frustrated by it, though – and, by extension, frustrated with him. Logan does not strike him as a much more promising option.

In truth, he thinks Lehnsherr would be the best choice. Lehnsherr seems uniquely comfortable communicating with Charles; where it might take other crew members several minutes to decipher one of his gestures, Lehnsherr always knows precisely what he means. Words are not – have never been – the only way for people to communicate, but they have become so commonplace that most people forget what can be conveyed in an expression, a posture, a movement of the hand. 

Lehnsherr recognizes this, Charles thinks. Actions are more important than language. 

But language sure as hell makes things easier when it comes to communicating with everyone else. 

The only obstacle Charles can see is Lehnsherr’s willingness to actually teach him. Lehnsherr is a busy man – and Charles still remembers how quickly Lehnsherr dismissed him, every time they’ve been alone together. He’s not entirely sure Lehnsherr is fond of his presence. Tolerates it, perhaps. But in small doses. 

Frost’s point sticks with him. He is an outsider on this ship. Lehnsherr is keeping him here until they pass Sihwa and he can drop him on the surface of the nearest inhabited planet. He is not a crew member. He is a guest. No – a passenger. A refugee, living off Lehnsherr’s charity. How much more can he really ask of the man?

But it will be weeks before they reach Sihwa, still. Charles is quite sure Frost’s patience does not extend that long.

He can ask, he decides. He’ll ask. The worst thing Lehnsherr can do is look annoyed, and refuse him. Even that is better than passively waiting for Frost to make her move.

\--

That evening, after dinner, he makes his way to the library in the unused residential wing of the ship. 

He is not sure if he can expect Lehnsherr to be there or not. Perhaps it was a one-time occurrence; Lehnsherr has his own study, after all. He does not _have_ to trudge all the way down to the abandoned dormitories every time he needs some peace and quiet.

And yet when Charles steps out into the hall, the light in the library is turned on. That same golden light pooling on the carpet just outside the doors, the subtle sounds of movement within. 

Charles moves forward - _sliding_ his feet across the floor this time, just like Lehnsherr told him. Lehnsherr was right, he notes; it is quieter.

Not that it does him much good. He is paying such close attention to the sound of his feet on the carpet – watching each step, careful to avoid missteps - that he doesn’t notice when things go silent within the library. He slides, quietly, down the corridor, toward the light, one hand trailing along the wall to keep his balance (he’s still not quite used to the kinesthetics of his human form). 

He doesn’t notice Lehnsherr until he’s almost upon him. 

But he rounds the corner, coming into the doorway of the library, and there Lehnsherr is – standing just inside, close enough that a single step further would have Charles colliding into him.

He swallows quickly, to stave off an exclamation of surprise. Lehnsherr heard him coming. Again. Only this time he hadn’t bothered to pretend otherwise.

“Better,” Lehnsherr says. “A little more slowly next time, perhaps.”

Charles stares at him – and Lehnsherr’s mouth twitches into something that Charles almost but doesn’t quite want to call a smile. Charles realizes after a moment that his lips have parted and he must look a bit starstruck, standing here with his mouth open and his gaze fixed on Lehnsherr’s, gaping at him like some kind of spacefish.

It really shouldn’t be this difficult to look away from the man. And yet.

Eventually Charles is able to smile, and gesture past Lehnsherr at the room. 

“Of course,” Lehnsherr says. For the briefest of seconds he almost looks unsettled, himself. But Charles must have imagined it, for just as quickly, Lehnsherr is stepping aside to let Charles pass, his posture gone almost military. 

Charles makes his way over toward the table. Most of the papers spread out on its surface are the same ones he recognizes from his last visit, though some have been replaced – and there’s a sheaf of paper stacked in the lower right corner where Lehnsherr has been scribbling away. Notes, perhaps, or equations. It’s impossible for Charles to tell the difference.

“Have a seat,” Lehnsherr says. Charles gets the sense that it’s more of an order than a suggestion, so he obeys, settling down in one of the chairs by the faux fireplace.

Lehnsherr sits in the chair opposite, feet firmly on the floor and his legs spread – Charles recalls from his time in the ship people’s minds that this is meant to be a display of dominance. Personally, he thinks the Commander stripes on Lehnsherr’s uniform do that more than sufficiently as-is. Not to mention Lehnsherr’s height.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Lehnsherr says, not bothering with any kind of prelude. “Raven has been giving me updates on your progress. She says you’re a fast learner. Would you say that’s true?”

Charles nods, and Lehnsherr laughs.

“No concern with humility, I see,” he says. “No, there’s no need to look so worried – it’s refreshing.” Lehnsherr shifts in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, ankle-to-knee. “I trust you are getting along with the crew well enough.”

Charles nods again, though a bit more slowly this time.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been familiarizing yourself with the ship. You’ll have to let me know, later, if you have noticed any of those modifications I told you about.” Lehnsherr’s hand has grasped onto his own ankle; fingers are slim but strong. “And you’re bunking with Logan. I’m sure that’s an adventure.”

Charles cracks a tiny smile, not quite sure what response Lehnsherr is expecting – if he wants teasing acquiescence or for Charles to leap pre-emptively to Logan’s defense. 

It seems, though, as if Lehnsherr didn’t have any particular reaction in mind, as he moves on to the next topic seamlessly enough. “We’re about three weeks out from Sihwa, now. Once we’re within range, I’ll send out a transmission to let the docks know to expect you. I trust you can find your own way home from there.”

Well, there’s no real answer to give but the affirmative. It aches, the realization that having a home is something that is simply … _assumed_ of people. It is a constant – the baseline – rather than the aberration. Charles has no home left. He has no idea what he will do, once he is out on the rock. He has no language, no marketable skills, no way of supporting himself. He might have survived the threat of going mad inside this human body, but he’s condemned in an entirely new way now. 

However … Sihwa is populated. It’s teeming with ship people. Charles just needs to be able to communicate with a single one of them, and tell the story of the stars. It’s the same problem. The same goal, just in a different form. If he can learn to write, then he can find his way to the governing body of Sihwa and tell the ship people personally of the danger they’re in.

First things first, though. He still needs that tutor.

Charles gets out of his chair – and Lehnsherr watches him as he heads for one of the bookshelves and picks out a slim book. (He has no idea if a thinner book implies simpler diction; he certainly hopes so.) He carries the book back over to where they’ve been sitting and leans over the small table next to Lehnsherr’s chair, opening the book on its surface. 

How to explain this? He frowns down at the page. Lehnsherr’s gaze is on his face, not on the book; he can feel Lehnsherr’s eyes on him without having to look. Can sense Lehnsherr’s attention, boring into his temple. It makes it difficult to concentrate. 

At last, Charles points down at the book, at an isolated set of characters, and circles them with his fingertip. He lifts the book up toward his face and pretends to read it, then peers up at Lehnsherr over the binding, brows raised.

“You’re learning how to read?” Lehnsherr guesses.

Close enough. Charles gives him a half-smile. He puts the book down again, pinches together the fingers of one hand, places them on the page, and mimics the scribbling motion he has seen the ship people make while writing.

“And to write,” Lehnsherr says.

Charles nods. 

“And how do you plan to do that?”

As if, Charles thinks, it weren’t perfectly obvious. He points to Lehnsherr.

“Me?”

Another nod.

“You want _me_ to teach you.”

 _Yes._

“And what makes you think I’d be a good teacher?” Lehnsherr lifts one brow, clearly expecting some kind of answer.

But it’s hardly a yes or no question. Charles shrugs.

“Well, you need to learn, there’s no denying that.” Lehnsherr watches him quietly for a moment, his fingers steepled together beneath his chin. The light from the gas fire plays tricks across his face, turning his features sharp, lending depth and shadows to his pale eyes. Charles just waits, holding his gaze until Lehnsherr decides there’s been enough suspense for one evening, and says: “I can’t teach you during the day. And some nights I’ll be required on the bridge. I won’t be able to give you advance notice on those days. Otherwise, I can meet you here in the evenings at 2030 hours. We’ll begin tonight.”

Charles beams, and Lehnsherr rolls his eyes. “Don’t get too excited. You will not find this an easy task. And it’s certainly not something you’ll have mastered by the time we arrive in Sihwa.”

Charles suspects Lehnsherr is rather underestimating his motivation.

“Sit down,” Lehnsherr says. 

He does.

Lehnsherr shakes his head, standing. “No, over at the table. You’ll need a flat surface.”

Charles makes the transition, bringing the book along with him, just in case it will prove useful as more than a mere prop. He sits down and Lehnsherr rifles through the paper on the tabletop, finding a blank sheet and spreading it out in front of him. 

“The most difficult thing about writing Common is going to be the characters,” Lehnsherr says. He picks up a pen and sketches out a few words on the page. They’re much larger than the ones in the books, and neater than Lehnsherr’s scrawling notes on the blueprints beneath their blank sheet. “A lot of the languages in the outer galaxies are written phonetically, but if you’re going to learn something, it’s best if it’s Common - difficulty aside.”

Charles leans in, clasping both hands in his lap to resist the urge to pull the pen out of Lehnsherr’s grasp and try copying the characters down for himself.

“Each character has two parts,” Lehnsherr explains. “The radical, which is this part here – “ he circles the leftmost part of a character, “ – and a second part. The second part can be phonetic. Never entirely phonetic, but it may at least give you an idea of what the word’s supposed to sound like. It can also be semantic, or a derivation of something that was once phonetic or semantic but has evolved to be neither.”

Charles chews the inside of his cheek and refuses to be intimidated. Ship people from the outer galaxies learn Common as a second language all the time, don’t they? And that is without centuries of experience living in the minds of its native speakers. At least Charles already understands the language fluently. 

Lehnsherr glances at him, and Charles must not look too confused, as Lehnsherr continues on a second later.

“I’ll try to teach you to read and to write concurrently, if I can. It’s how most people learn naturally. This character,” he taps his pen on the page, “is the first person singular pronoun, ‘I.’ If you add _this_ \- “ a few quick strokes of his pen, “it becomes ‘we.’ Each character is one syllable. Sometimes a single character can be an entire word; other times, you’ll need to string several characters together to make a word with any meaning. For now, though, let’s focus on the monosyllabic. Here,” Lehnsherr hands him the pen. “Copy down the first character, just like I wrote it.”

Charles lowers the nib to the page, but just that quickly Lehnsherr is snatching the pen away again, scowling. 

“ _No._ Not like that. Not so … so ham-fisted. Delicately. Like this.” He presses the pen back into Charles’s palm and positions each of his fingers one at a time, curling them around the shaft and then directing the tip back to the page. “There. Yes, perfect. Try it now.”

Charles glances up at Lehnsherr quickly before obeying. His hand shakes and a dark, thick line sinks into the paper, jagged and unclean.

“Not so hard,” Lehnsherr murmurs.

Charles lets up on the pressure somewhat and the pen moves more easily on the page, leaving dark blue ink in its wake. It takes him much longer to write the character than it took Lehnsherr – but when he’s done, there it is: clumsy, childish, but _there_. ‘I.’

Lehnsherr makes him copy the character over and over again, until he can write with a steady hand and the word comes quickly and easily. It still doesn’t look nearly as elegant as Lehnsherr’s own spiky calligraphy, but it’s something at least. The first step toward actual communication.

They do more words, after that, to a total of fifteen characters – Lehnsherr leaning over Charles’s shoulder, pointing out the mistakes as Charles makes them, and periodically providing relevant tidbits of information about the writing system in Common Tongue.

After an hour, Lehnsherr tells him to stop. “Good,” he says, looking over the page, now filled to all four corners with Charles’s slightly-curving rows of mimicked characters. “You’re improving quickly. With luck, we’ll have you composing some simple sentences by the end of the week.” 

Charles grins, something warm swelling inside his chest – and before he can really think about it, he is reaching for Lehnsherr’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tight.

It takes him a second, to realize why Lehnsherr has gone still. When he looks up, Lehnsherr is staring at their clasped hands with an unreadable expression on his face – and he doesn’t pull away, but it is abruptly, incredibly clear to Charles that this was a bad idea. 

Ignoring the heat rising in his cheeks, Charles releases his grip and Lehnsherr takes a step back, both hands immediately locked behind him. Charles really thought he had a better understanding of the eccentricities of human displays of gratitude. Clearly he was mistaken.

He won’t look at Lehnsherr’s face; he settles for pretending to occupy himself with the page he’d been practicing on, folding it up with neat seams and standing, careful to move to the opposite side of the chair from Lehnsherr. 

“Practice copying those characters tonight and tomorrow,” Lehnsherr says – and Charles is surprised to find that his tone is as even as it had been before – calm, none of his physical reaction to touch betrayed in his voice. “Make sure you have them memorized. We don’t have time to continue going over things you’ve already learned. Take the pen and an extra sheet of paper with you.”

Lehnsherr does not move as Charles collects his things, tucking both folded papers into his trouser pocket. He just keeps that formal posture, reverted from the role of tutor back to that of Commander in an instant.

Charles lingers a moment after he is done. He looks up - finally dares to meet Lehnsherr’s gaze again; he winds his mind in tight and mouths, _Thank you_.

He goes before Lehnsherr can respond, heart tumbling in his chest.

\--


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, so much, to **Tahariel** for beta-ing this monster of a fic. :) I really appreciate it.

Charles is not sure if Lehnsherr will be there the next night. After what happened …. Charles spent the rest of the next day ruminating on it, turning it over and over in his head. In retrospect, he has no idea why he did what he did. _Touching_ Lehnsherr - He knows perfectly well, how the ship people are about physical contact. It signifies aggression, or intimate affection between family and close friends. Not the gratitude of a near-stranger. 

He remembers the way Lehnsherr’s fingers felt, laced with his: soft, and warm, but unmoving. Certainly not … _receptive_. The way something in his gaze immediately shuttered when their eyes met. 

The regret feeds on itself. Charles wakes up in the morning feeling mildly embarrassed – and by evening, as he’s cleaning up his dinner dishes and preparing to return to the library, it feels as though he has swallowed a ball of lead.

So he takes his time, walking the halls toward the empty dormitories. He lingers on the catwalk to gaze out at the passing stars. He stops to use the bathroom – twice. He intentionally gets lost on the third floor and wanders around aimlessly for a while before finding his way back to the elevator. 

He delays as long as possible, until the delay becomes a type of anxiety all its own, and he makes his way down the carpeted corridor to the library. The door is open. Light on. So Lehnsherr came, after all.

He doesn’t bother trying to soften his approach this time. Lehnsherr is sitting in the same chair as he was the last time – by the fireplace, legs crossed with one ankle on the opposite knee. He’s changed out of his uniform. That small detail catches in Charles’s mind, grows: Lehnsherr looks thinner, without it, his limbs well-muscled but slimmer than Charles had assumed, long and elegant. 

“You’re late,” is the first thing out of Lehnsherr’s mouth. 

Of course, Charles thinks. He hadn’t really expected the Commander to feign ignorance. 

“Today, I will assume that dinner went over time – or that you got lost, or you unexpectedly had to battle an alien invader in the west wing. In the future, however, you should be advised that I do not tolerate tardiness. I am happy to teach you, but if you cannot be bothered to show up – I do have a ship to Command.”

Charles nods, feeling his cheeks go hot. He swallows down the heavy thing in the back of his throat, worried that if he does not stay on his guard, he’ll be tempted to speak. To apologize, or try to explain himself.

But Lehnsherr appears to have said all he needs to – and takes Charles’s chagrin as apology enough. “Now that we’re both on the same page, let’s get started. At the table.”

Charles sits, and Lehnsherr unfolds himself up out of his armchair, crossing toward him. There’s a second chair at the table, now, that wasn’t there before; Lehnsherr sits in it, dragging it forward until he can reach over and pull a blank piece of paper across the desk. 

“Let’s see how well you remember what we went over last night,” Lehnsherr says. He picks up a pen, and holds it out. Charles takes it from his hand slowly, concentrating on fitting his fingers around the shaft just as Lehnsherr had shown him before. “Good,” Lehnsherr murmurs when he has it right. “Now, write the characters I taught you yesterday. Take as much time as you need; accuracy is more important than speed.”

Charles nods. He presses the nib to the page and bites his lower lip, focusing his attention, reaching back into memory to first try to picture the characters in his mind: the sharp angles of the first person pronoun, and the wider curves of ‘you.’ Lehnsherr watches closely, leaning in after a moment to get a better view. 

“Write ‘hungry’ again,” Lehnsherr says. “A smaller radical, this time. Keep it localized to the upper left quadrant.”

Charles tries again, and Lehnsherr shakes his head. “No. Like this.” He steals the pen back from Charles and writes the word out slowly, taking care to be certain Charles sees every stroke. Lehnsherr’s hand is strong and sure, and the character he writes is clean and sharp: something Charles thinks actually _deserves_ to have meaning – unlike the shaky, squashed symbols he manages to produce. He tries to mimic it, when Lehnsherr gives the pen back to him, but it’s a clumsy imitation.

And yet it must not be too atrocious; Lehnsherr smiles when he’s done, fine lines drawing at the corners of his eyes. “Much better,” he says. “You’re improving. Twelve out of fifteen characters were perfect on your first try. That’s not bad.” 

Still, Charles thinks. It’s not good _enough._ Not until he gets every character right, every time. If his characters are not legible, he will not be able to communicate.

“Let’s move on,” Lehnsherr says. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, cuffing them just below the elbows, and sets to writing out several lines of characters on the paper. Charles watches the muscles shifting below the gold skin of his forearm, tendons drawn taught at his knuckles, at his wrist, the greenish line of a vein.

“Can you read these?” Lehnsherr asks.

Charles leans forward, frowning down at the page. It takes him a moment to piece together that the characters are meant to be read from left to right, horizontally across the page – he hadn’t been paying attention to the actual words, as Lehnsherr was writing them. 

“Take it one character at a time.” Lehnsherr points to the first word with the end of the pen. “Start here. I’ll list the words we’ve learned so far. When you hear the one that corresponds to this character, tap on the table.” 

Charles nods his agreement.

Lehnsherr reads the fifteen characters off slowly. When Lehnsherr reaches ‘he,’ Charles taps.

“He,” Lehnsherr confirms. “Next character – ”

It’s slow-going. For every character of every sentence on the page, Lehnsherr has to list out fifteen possible words, waiting for Charles to identify the correct one. Charles wonders if it frustrates Lehnsherr, how long it takes to verify if Charles is able to read the simple phrases. It would be easier, more natural, if Charles could simply speak them out loud, the way he might if he were anyone else, simply learning Common as a second language. But that is an obvious impossibility.

Sometimes Lehnsherr has to list the words twice before Charles is able to pick out the right one, but Charles gets them all in the end. Reading is easier than writing. He can recognize a word he knows when he sees it. Recalling the structure of the character on his own, however, is significantly more difficult.

They learn twenty new characters when they’re done practicing the old. Lehnsherr has Charles practice writing them out alone, and then combining them with the earlier characters to form a few easy sentences. Charles is biting back a grin by the end of it. He’s finally starting to learn. True, most of what he can communicate is no more complex than ‘He owns a ship’ and ‘Thank you, but I am not hungry’ - but it’s a start.

Lehnsherr looks pleased, as well, which surprises Charles. Somehow he had thought Lehnsherr might see this as more of a chore – but there’s genuine satisfaction in his eyes as he folds up the practice parchment and hands it over to Charles. 

“You’re learning quickly,” he says, as Charles collects a few sheets of blank paper to use for practice, tucking them into his back pocket. “I had not expected you to be able to form sentences for a few days, yet.”

Charles smiles and shrugs, not bothering with any pretense at modesty. 

“You will have all of the new characters memorized perfectly by tomorrow, then.” Lehnsherr arches a brow, and Charles is not wrong, he thinks, if he detects something like a smirk teasing round the corners of Lehnsherr’s mouth.

He lifts the pen to his temple and gives Lehnsherr a jaunty mockery of a salute. Lehnsherr laughs. “You should leave now, before I come to my senses and punish you for insubordination.”

Charles goes, but it’s with lighter step than he arrived, tracing the character for ‘you’ in his head and smiling the whole way back.

\--

He continues to learn quickly, by Lehnsherr’s account.

But by the end of the week, he still only knows around fifty characters – and it is becoming increasingly difficult to bear them all in his mind at once, keeping separate the subtle differences between the radicals for ‘knife’ and ‘heart,’ and grasping the deceptive eccentricities of Common syntax, the rules of which seem to be constantly in flux. 

Lehnsherr can tell that he’s getting frustrated, Charles thinks. At any rate, he starts allowing Charles to linger after their lessons are done, instead of dismissing him immediately. They sit in the chairs by the fire and Lehnsherr reads to him from one of his books – a novel, about a boy trying to solve a murder, who then falls in love with one of the killers. Charles closes his eyes and watches the scenes play out in his head, cupping the tea Lehnsherr made him between both hands, half-dozing with the low, quiet tones of Lehnsherr’s voice murmuring through the back of his mind. 

Another time, Lehnsherr teaches him to play chess. Charles picks this up more quickly than he does writing, and he beats Lehnsherr on their third game – though it’s possible, he supposes, that Lehnsherr let him win.

Lehnsherr tells him about his time as an engineer – and about the years he spent in the Federation’s military academy, training to be an officer. He tells the story of how he met Raven, and of the time they got attacked by bandits in the Faria’s asteroid belt, the time that they almost ran out of food supplies and everyone on board lived off canned beans for a week before they were able to restock.

He never tells Charles about his childhood, and Charles has no way of asking.

Lehnsherr teaches him to write the names of all the crew members. Lehnsherr teaches him the character for his own first name, Erik, and Charles finds himself thinking of the Commander by that name instead – moving his lips in the shape of the syllables when he’s alone, the blunt simplicity of it, the occlusive feel of the ‘k’ in the back of his throat – though he still never dares to speak it aloud. 

\--

There is no cook on board the _Arkham_. Instead, the crew has set up a rotating schedule, two people assigned to make each meal. The roster is posted on the inside of the pantry door. Someone has revised the schedule to include Charles – and it’s easy enough to pick out his name, at least, even if he hadn’t learned to read the names of the others. His is the only name which is composed of a single character: no last name. The only two crew members who aren’t on the schedule are Erik and Emma Frost. Their Command duties, Darwin explains to him, take first priority. 

Charles is paired with Alex for dinner tonight. Spaghetti and meatballs, with toasted garlic bread and salad. “It’s the only thing I know how to make,” Alex had admitted as he wrote the menu on the whiteboard outside the kitchen. “They’ll just have to deal with it.”

Alex puts Charles on salad duty. It’s the simplest task: “Find some vegetables and mix them in with the lettuce” had been Alex’s only instruction. The lettuce is easy enough to find; it’s in a drawer in the refrigerator, along with all the rest of the perishable foods the ship had picked up last time it made landfall. Charles isn’t quite sure how it’s supposed to be prepared - but he washes it in the sink, just in case, before tearing it into a bowl. 

There are fresh onions in the pantry. The skins are a little hard to peel off; they keep catching under Charles’s thumbnails, but eventually he manages to exposure the rounded white flesh underneath. There is a rack of knives hanging on the wall, ranging from small cutlery to the large and block-like. Charles picks one of the former; he might have been in this human form for several weeks now, but he still doesn’t entirely trust himself to keep from cutting off a finger or two if his hand slips.

So he goes slowly at first, slicing the onion in half before turning each part dome-side-up on the cutting board. He presses the heel of his hand against the curve of the onion for stability at first, before discovering he doesn’t really need it – the onion is heavy enough to stay put on its own, at least for the most part. 

Charles learns to regret deciding to incorporate onion into the salad half a minute later, when he ends up with his back turned to the cutting board, both wrists pressed to his clenched-shut eyes, the stinging from the onions briefly overwhelming the constant throbbing pain of keeping his telepathy restrained. 

It ... _burns_ , is really the only way to describe it. Like acid. It feels as if something is scraping away the outer layers of his eyes and holding a match to his retinas. It doesn’t hurt bad enough to cry, but he finds that’s what he’s doing anyway – tears welling up hot and fast, threatening to spill down his cheeks.

“Are you _crying?_ ” 

Charles lowers his arms to look at Alex, who has abandoned the meatballs and is standing there, hands raised awkwardly and smeared with ground meat, horrified. 

“Oh god,” Alex says when he sees Charles’s face. “You _are._ What do you – I don’t know what to do! What do you need? What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?”

A brief pause, confusion flickering across Alex’s expression.

“Wait,” he says, gaze dropping to the cutting board. “Are you crying because of onions or are you _crying?_ ”

Charles wipes some of the wetness from his face with the sleeve of his shirt and then gestures back toward the cutting board without turning around.

For a second, Alex seems dumbfounded – and then, a bit belatedly, he laughs. “What,” he says, “you never chopped onions before?”

Charles just shakes his head, pressing his hands back in front of his face, trying to obscure the tears which are still leaking down heated cheeks. 

“You _serious?_ ”

He nods.

“Wow. Okay, well, here’s your warning, then: slicing onions is a fucking bitch.” Alex chuckles again, turning back to the pot of sauce he’s stirring. “Fucking hell, you had me going for a second there. Best to just get it over with. Wash your eyes out after if you have to.”

Charles ends up chopping the rest of the onions with his face turned as far away as possible, gazing at the cutting board through narrowed and reddened eyes, trying not to breathe too deep the pungent scent. He’s relieved when he can finally scrape the diced onions into the bowl with the lettuce – and he makes a point of rinsing off the cutting board before using it for anything else. Just in case. 

He picks out an array of salad dressings and unscrews the caps on all of them, lining them up along the edge of the counter. Then he goes through and picks each bottle up one at a time and smells it. It is not completely clear, even then, what flavor each dressing is supposed to be. The most he can determine is that there seem to be two main varieties: creamy, and vinegary. He supposes either one could go well enough with the salad – and it’s likely more a matter of personal preference than anything else. He likes the bitter smell of the vinegar-based ones. It’s more interesting. 

He selects one of the vinegar dressings at random and sets it aside, re-capping the rest and putting them back in the fridge. The salad seems bare, with only lettuce and onion, but Charles didn’t see any other fresh vegetables beyond those. He opens the pantry again and examines its contents. 

Things are mostly … canned. Charles picks up one of the items nearest him and turns it over in his hand. There is a picture of pineapple on the front. He puts it back. 

“Smells good in here,” someone says. 

Charles peers out from round the pantry door. Raven has just slipped into the kitchen, perching herself on the edge of a counter, blue legs swinging through the air. She has her eyes on Alex’s pan of raw meatballs, which he’s only just now rolling in flour and dropping into his pot of tomato sauce. “Are those sausage?”

“Pork and beef, yeah,” Alex says. “And spice. Lots of spice. As long as you like garlic, you’ll like these.”

“Garlic’s good,” Raven says. “And – what else? Salad?”

“Charles is on it.” 

Raven looks to him and Charles lifts a hand in greeting, returning her smile with a small one of his own. 

“Hey, Charles,” she says. “How’s your first cooking shift going?”

Alex snorts. “It’s a work in progress,” he says. “Charles spent about fifteen minutes smelling all the salad dressings before he could finally pick one.”

Raven reaches for the bottle of dressing. “Ooh, balsamic. Great choice. Logan’s favorite. Who knows? Maybe it’ll put him in a good mood for the rest of the night.”

Charles finds the vegetables at last, and he pulls out a few cans of carrots, beets, and peas to carry back over to his counter. Alex gestures in Charles’s direction with his spoon and smirks. “Well, Charles here would know all about that, wouldn’t he?”

“What? How so?”

“I just mean, he’s bunking with Logan. And from what I hear, they’ve been getting awfully cozy….” 

“ _Oh_ ,” Raven says, suddenly looking almost gleeful. “Is that so?” She scoots down the counter, closer to Charles, who is starting to feel like he’s rather lost the train of the conversation. “No wonder he’s been so nice lately. Tell us, Charles – is he _good?_ ”

Charles gives her his best confused look. Some kind of ship person in-joke, he suspects, though he has not the faintest idea what the punchline is intended to be. 

Raven gives him an oddly sympathetic look, one far too exaggerated to be natural. “Aw, unrequited, is it? That’s too bad.”

“Let us know if you two ever want some alone time,” Alex says. “Sock on the door, or –“

“Do you really want to finish that sentence, Ensign Summers?” 

Both Raven and Alex are immediately leaping to attention, Raven pushing herself off the counter hastily and assuming stiff military posture, her cheeks flushed a deep navy. 

Erik is standing just inside the kitchen door, his hands clasped behind his back and a frown thinning his lips. He is back in his Commander’s uniform, with its neatly-tailored lines and crisp collar, and Charles is struck by how different he seems like this – formal and aloof, the same as he’d been the day that Charles first met him. The contrast is striking, how far they’ve come - from _this,_ to Erik sitting in his armchair, toying with a stolen chess piece and trying to distract Charles from his strategy with a glass of wine and a story about getting detention in military academy.

With Erik in formal uniform and locked down to impersonal precision, though, even Charles feels wary. He finds himself standing a little straighter, himself, clutching the can of peas to his chest and trying to figure out if he is supposed to go into a salute as well.

“At ease,” Erik says after a moment. 

Raven and Alex drop their arms and relax into a posture that is only slightly more natural. Raven looks distinctly guilty, unable to meet Erik’s gaze.

“We were just joking around,” Alex says. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Charles is a guest on board this ship,” Erik says. “Personally, I find this particular brand of ‘joking around’ less than hospitable.”

It’s Charles’s turn to have flushed cheeks. He still wasn’t sure what they had been teasing him about, but he hadn’t really minded. It made him feel included. 

“Sorry,” Alex mutters, and Raven follows suit a moment later.

Erik just nods, once, in acknowledgment. And then he’s stepping past them, opening up the pantry and pulling out a teabag. The three of them stand there in an uncomfortable silence as Erik turns on the electric kettle, waits for the water to boil as he finds a mug, drops the bag into it. Charles picks at the edge of the can of peas with his thumbnail. He’s never seen Erik in the kitchen before. Come to think of it, he’s only ever seen Erik in the library – discounting, of course, the first night on the bridge and later in Erik’s study. 

Raven and Alex clearly find it odd as well; they’re exchanging glances across the room, one of Alex’s brows rising questioningly, followed by a quick shake of Raven’s head. Charles fights the instinctive urge to reach forward with his mind and read their thoughts, to interpret this silent exchange. The pain claws down his spine and he closes his eyes, forcing himself to breathe steadily through it. It’s several moments before the throbbing in his head starts to fade to a dull pound. He lets out an exhale, and opens his eyes again. The room is still a little blurred, but it’s not as bad as it sometimes gets. He is under control, again.

The electric kettle whistles and Erik lifts it off its cradle, pouring boiling water into his mug. “Alex, your presence is required in Bay 12. Raven will take over for you here.”

“Yes, sir.” Alex immediately sets his spoon down and heads for the sink to wash off his hands and strip off his apron. 

The can of peas in Charles’s hands is tugged out of his grip – and he has to clap a hand over his mouth to muffle what is almost a _yelp_ of surprise. His gaze goes straight to Erik, who has lifted his fingers in Charles’s direction. Charles looks back to the cans, watching as the lids peel off all three of them and drop into the trash. 

Well. That solves the conundrum of how to open the vegetables, then. Charles gives Erik a smile and a small nod of thanks.

Erik’s expression is as unreadable as ever – but his gaze does seem to linger on Charles a moment longer before he turns and leaves the room, Alex on his heels.

Charles is left with the distinct sense that something just happened, and he completely failed to understand every part of it. He stares down at the canned vegetables, carrots and beets and peas swimming in colored water. It takes him a moment to think to strain them over the sink before carrying the cans back over to the counter and dumping the contents into the salad bowl. 

“Charles.” Raven is at his shoulder, apron over her neck but still untied. “We were just messing around. We know you didn’t have sex with Logan, okay?”

Charles nods quickly – perhaps a little _too_ quickly, because then Raven is frowning and taking a step closer, arms crossed over her chest.

“Wait,” she says. “You … _do_ know what sex is, right? You know, the birds and the bees, and so on?”

Charles shrugs. But – no, there’s really no use in making some pretense at ambiguity. It’s obvious he has no idea what she is talking about. So he shakes his head a second later.

“ _What?_ \- No, sorry, I don’t mean it like – but, seriously, _what?_ You’re … twenty-three? Twenty-four? How can you possibly get to your age and still not know about sex?”

Charles gets the feeling he has missed something rather crucial in his time aboard the ship. But there are probably plenty of ‘crucial’ things that simply are not all that important. Darwin and Alex certainly spent enough time trying to explain the concept of entertainment television to him a few days back, and Charles is still not entirely sure why the ins and outs of _International Love Station_ are all that necessary to a basic understanding of ship person life and culture.

Raven, however, seems positively delighted to have the chance to educate him on this matter. “Okay,” she says, holding up both hands and blowing out a sharp exhale. “Okay. Charles, it is time for you to have the Talk.”

She pulls the salad bowl out of his reach, pushing it to the far edge of the counter, and begins.

“So, sometimes, when you have two grown-ups who love each other very much – or just really like each other – or really hate each other but really, you know, _like_ each other – “

As Raven talks, Charles can feel his eyes getting wider and wider. He … well. He had been … _somewhat_ aware of such practices, before. He had briefly glimpsed them from time to time in the thoughts of ship people, but it had never seemed very interesting or important. He had been so much more intrigued by _general_ knowledge of ship person society; their drive to seek pleasure from one another had seemed about as compelling as the rest of their bodily functions. 

Now, though – now, Charles finds himself listening, almost in spite of himself. Thinking about the act, having a name for it, and knowledge of the context in which it was supposed to occur, the emotional weight ship people assigned to it …. It makes him uncomfortable. It feels private. Intimate. Not at all something Charles should be thinking about Raven doing, or Alex, or … Erik. 

Something warm blooms in the pit of his stomach and he forces himself to swallow, blinking several times in quick succession, trying to keep himself neutral. He is a star. An observer. He is not … invested, in this sort of thing. It does not pertain to him. Not even now, even though he’s been locked inside this human form, with all its peculiarities and – desires, surely, as well. 

Raven finally winds down, and when she’s finished she gives him a huge grin, looking far more smug than Charles thinks any human ought to be after going into that level of … detail. About _that._

He fights his own mind for a different reason, this time: trying to hold at bay all the snapshot images he’s seen in human minds over the centuries, of bare skin and hot tongues, the way someone’s thighs ached afterward, wetness smeared across someone’s stomach.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Raven says, and Charles realizes his cheeks must have gone scarlet. “It’s natural to feel a little awkward, I suppose, if you really didn’t know anything about it before now. But, now you _do_ know. So, there.” She reaches for his salad bowl and drags it back along the counter, pushing it toward him. “Just think – you might feel weird about it now, but soon enough …. You and Logan, eh?”

She laughs and Charles smiles despite himself, smacking her lightly on the arm the way he’d seen her hit Hank once in mock offense. 

“I’m just _saying._ ” She swoops in to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “And now my balls are burning. Finish your salad.”

She skips off, back to the stove and the boiling pot of tomato sauce and meatballs, leaving Charles to prod at his salad with a wooden spoon, fighting to keep his hands steady and his mind carefully, perfectly blank.

\--


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *
> 
> In which this story finally earns its rating.
> 
> \--
> 
> The amazing **crow821** did [some fanart for this fic](http://crow821.tumblr.com/post/35140740205/some-first-class-fanart-for-spiced-pianos-starry)! It’s seriously beautiful, and I think it captures the feel of the fic and the characters perfectly. 
> 
> Thanks as always to **Tahariel** , whose beta work is the glue that holds this fic together.
> 
> *

Charles taps his fingers against the closed steel doors.

“Door?”

Charles shakes his head; he knows that one already.

“Elevator?”

_Yes._

Erik presses his notepad against the wall and writes out the characters. Charles hangs over his shoulder and watches, moving his lips silently in the shape of the syllables, trying to engrave the word into his mind. Erik passes pen and paper over to Charles when he’s done, and Charles spends the next several seconds copying the characters down as many times as he can. The lift arrives at their floor, doors sliding open. Charles draws a quick doodle of the navigation panel next to the word to help himself remember. It’s as jagged and cartoonish as his attempts at calligraphy, but he’ll know what it means even if no one else does.

Erik glances over his shoulder at the illustration and makes a soft snorting sound. “What the hell is that supposed to be?”

Charles gives him a dirty look and Erik’s lips tug upward. He reaches past Charles’s arm to tap once on the notepad. “It looks like a deformed toad. Is it meant to?”

Charles snatches the notepad away, tucking it under his elbow just as the elevator reaches their intended floor. They step out onto the catwalk, Erik slipping his hands into his pockets as he draws ahead slightly, leading the way. Charles’s gaze lingers as it always does - out over the railing, through the windows, at the stars spangled like flecks of mica across the vast sea of space. 

And –

_Of course._

He’s paused, there, standing with his hands locked around the railing, knuckles abruptly gone white. A second later he pushes himself into motion, dashing after Erik, grasping his arm and pulling him back. Erik turns, both brows going up. 

“Charles? What is it?”

Charles thrusts his notepad into Erik’s hands, followed by the pen. He points out at the stars, then at the page. _Write it down._

“Oh,” Erik says. “Stars?” 

Charles nods energetically.

“All right.” Erik uses his forearm as a desk, balancing the pad between palm and elbow, sketching the character with a few quick strokes.

Before the ink has even dried, Charles points at the written word and then presses his fist to his chest, pounding twice. _Me. Me, that’s me. I’m a star. Don’t you understand?_

“…Sorry?”

Apparently not. 

Charles bites his lower lip to hold back an exasperated noise and lowers the pen to paper, painstakingly writing out four characters.

_I am a star._

They’re shaky and unskilled, but they’re legible. They – they’re _words_ , they’re actual words that Erik will be able to **read**. Communication. At last. At _last_ , Charles will be able to explain himself, to explain all of this. And then it’s only a matter of time before he is telling Erik everything else, as well: about the drilling, the stars’ vanishing life force, their plot to cull the humans before the ship people can do any more harm. 

_I am a star._ Four simple words, but they mean so very much. 

Charles holds the notepad out for Erik to read. Erik takes it from his hands, frowning down at the page.

“I am a … star?” he reads aloud.

Charles grins – wide enough it makes his cheeks hurt, that he is certain the expression will be stuck like that for the rest of the day. Yes. _Yes._ He nods again, ignoring the way the sudden motion sends a stab of pain through his right temple. 

But then Erik laughs. Passes the notepad back to him and claps him on the shoulder, once. “You’re a star. A ... ha! Yes, Charles, you certainly are,” he says. 

Charles’s smile freezes in place, the notepad clutched between numb hands. He doesn’t understand. Charles doesn’t understand, and Erik doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand _why_ Erik doesn’t understand. He – he wrote it down. In clear Common. Erik read it out loud, but he still –

He doesn’t know. Erik doesn’t know the star people exist, so what use is it, to tell him that Charles is one of them? It will mean nothing to him. A strange phrase, a silly ship person joke. 

Charles doesn’t feel like a joke. 

But Erik is already turning, walking down the catwalk again, toward the bridge, still chuckling under his breath. Charles only dares hesitate a second longer before he’s hurrying after him again.

What possible way is there to explain? Charles does not yet know the words ... though he is beginning to think there are not enough words in the world to convey the truth. Not in Common, or in any other language.

So he taps Erik’s elbow again and then points toward the floor, has Erik write down that word as well. His heart is pounding in his chest. Erik didn’t understand. Erik has never not-understood, before. But now, the time Charles needs it most, he … doesn’t. So, what? What happens when Emma demands the truth from him again, and he cannot explain it?

He feels sick to his stomach. He barely pays any attention at all as he copies down the character for ‘floor’ over and over again. He can’t focus. His head throbs. 

Erik types in the code at the wall panel and the steel door to the bridge glides open. Charles hangs back in the hallway, uncertain if Erik wants him to follow. He’s been on the bridge before, of course, his first night on the ship, but this is different. He has no real reason to be here; the bridge is Erik’s territory – it is the heart of his ship, and a hand set down in the wrong place, on the wrong panel, could cause serious damage. Charles is familiar enough with bridge tech from all of his excursions on board damaged and abandoned ships, but it still feels like an intrusion.

Erik glances around and lifts a hand, beckoning Charles in. “I’ll only be a moment,” he says. “I need to change the settings for nightshift.” 

Charles steps onto the bridge slowly, leaving behind the starry light of the catwalk for the blue glow of computer screens and gleaming metal apparatus. The Commander’s chair is in the center of the room. Charles avoids it, though it is difficult not to remember the way Erik looked sitting there, the first time Charles saw him, so confident and calm in the position of power.

And – there’s that twist of unease again, tightening in his gut. Emma Frost, standing by the navigation panels, in her crisp white uniform with her hair perfectly coiffed, gaze fixed on Charles.

“Taking your new pet for a walk, are you?” she says, lifting a flawless brow.

“Don’t be catty, Emma. It’s unbecoming.” Erik takes a chair at the coding station and taps a few keys, pulling up the computer’s terminal. “Did you stir the oxygen tanks?”

“Of course I did,” Emma says. She’s still watching Charles, eyes narrowed and glittering. 

Charles seizes hold of the wires in his mind and pulls them taut again. Emma said she couldn’t sense him, that she couldn’t read his mind. But he can’t be sure – he doesn’t want to risk letting even one thread of thought spool loose. Not where Emma could read it. Not where it could poison Erik. The barbed edges of the restraints hurt more than usual – every time, his mind just a little more tender and bruised, and he worries what might happen if he ever pulls too hard, if the razors cut too deep. If he might start leaking telepathy like so much blood and pus, an infection seeping out of his mind and contaminating everyone in its reach.

He winces visibly and Emma’s frown deepens. Charles swallows, fighting the way something hot rises in the back of his throat - the thin, sick feeling in his chest.

Oblivious, Erik finishes typing his program into the computer and orders it to run, spinning his chair around and standing. Charles jerks his gaze away from Emma, looking down at the nearest monitor. The screen displays a star map – not a system he’s familiar with, though he recognizes certain patterns in common with his own. Something in his chest pangs. 

“Are you ready to go?” Erik says. 

Charles glances up. Erik has somehow drawn close without Charles noticing; he’s standing just over Charles’s shoulder, near enough that Charles imagines he can all but feel the heat of Erik’s body.

He nods, and follows Erik back off the bridge, out onto the catwalk. He can sense Emma’s gaze boring into the back of his head up until the moment the door closes again. His spine feels chilled to ice.

“Where next?” Erik asks – and it takes Charles a moment to realize he’s asking where they should go next, where Charles thinks he can find the most objects whose names he needs to know. 

Charles unfolds the map of the ship from the back folder of Erik’s notepad. His hands are steady. He points at the kitchens and Erik nods. 

“As you wish,” Erik says. He writes the word for ‘kitchen’ down on the page and waits for Charles to finish copying it down before he starts walking again. 

Charles keeps to himself, the rest of their trip downstairs. 

_I am a star_ , he thinks, staring at the back of Erik’s neck as they descend in the elevator. 

_I am a star._ There are two freckles just below Erik’s hairline, visible above the collar of his shirt.

 _I am a star._

He says it a dozen times, a hundred, inside his mind. Of course, Erik never hears. 

\--

There’s this certain way Erik smiles, sometimes, that Charles can’t get out of his head. A tiny lift at the corners of his mouth, quick enough and slight enough that Charles knows he is not meant to see it. Charles imagines the small, pleasant thoughts that might flick through the forefront of Erik’s mind from time to time. Erik is a very private person, but Charles likes to think about what it would be like, if he were ever able to slip into Erik’s head and just _watch_. 

He thinks of those smiles as tiny bursts of light in dark space, that watching them would be like watching a meteor shower from a hundred kilometers away. Beautiful but distant, gone before you could reach out your hand to touch, blink and you might miss it.

\--

Charles lies in bed that night, half-curled up beneath cotton sheets, staring up at the underside of Logan’s bunk and trying not to think.

It is more difficult than one might expect.

On the verge of sleep, while his mind was on the cusp of a dream, he had found himself somewhere else entirely. He was back in the library, the room lit only by the flames in the fireplace, glimmering golden off Erik’s skin. Erik’s hand, heat-warmed, smoothing down Charles’s stomach. Erik’s lips curving into that tiny half-smile as he presses them to the hollow beneath Charles’s collar bone. 

He had jerked awake soon after, his pulse racing and his cheeks flushed, all his attention immediately snapping down to the warm sensation between his legs. 

Even now, he is breathing too shallowly - trying not to make any noise at all, all his nerves on edge as he strains to listen for any sound that might indicate someone else is awake. But Logan snores quietly overhead, and across the room Alex is murmuring quietly, talking in his sleep as he often does. There is no telltale shift of weight upon mattress. Everyone else is asleep, pulled under the tide of their own fatigue, locked within the clockwork machinery of their own slumbering minds.

Charles’s breath evens out after a while, but his imagination keeps wanting to drift back to thoughts of naked flesh and soft, wet tongue. Erik’s, specifically. It’s inescapably Erik’s hands, after all, that he wants to see sliding down his thighs. Erik’s teeth catching on the lobe of his ear. 

He isn’t sure he ought to be thinking such things. Especially not about the Commander. His ... tutor.

Charles bites his lower lip and rolls over in his bed, pressing his face into his pillow. He should just go back to sleep. He should try to put this out of his mind and focus on something productive, if sleep eludes him. He should consider his studies – go over the characters in his mind, fit them into sentences. He should not fixate on the idea of Erik tracing the character for Charles’s name on his sternum - or the way that same name sounds with Erik’s voice wrapped around it, low and warm. 

Charles muffles a frustrated noise against the pillow and shifts his hips – just a little, just to get more comfortable – but the drag of his cock against the mattress completely derails his attention. 

It feels … _good_. 

He’s holding his breath, now, feeling abruptly far more alert than he’s felt all day long. It seems incredibly daring, when he presses his hips down against the bed again – and this time he grinds down just a little, intensifying the sensation. 

It feels like … like all the blood in his body is rushing down below his navel, pleasure curling in small tendrils up along his hipbones, into his stomach and the bottom of his chest. He presses a hand down between his body and the bed, fingers reaching below the elastic band of his pajama bottoms. Skimming past the soft curls of hair between his legs, they reach something – hot. And hard. Charles’s .... The pieces fit themselves together belatedly, and Charles remembers what Raven had said in the kitchen. About hard cocks and holes. Lubrication, penetration. 

Somehow it had not occurred to him that his body could react like this if someone else wasn’t there with him.

He pulls his hand out of his pants and rolls onto his back again, looking down at his erection tenting the fabric. Almost instantly, his mind considers what Erik might look like, with a similar bulge in the trousers of his stiff military uniform – looking at him, hard for _him._

He needs to stop.

Charles closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath, then turns, sitting up and grasping the ladder at the foot of his bed, swinging himself around and down. The floor is cold beneath his bare feet as he pads over to the shared bathroom, pulling the door shut behind him before turning on the light. 

In the mirror, his skin is stained pink, from his cheeks down to his chest, disappearing beneath his collar. Even his eyes, he thinks, look glassy - like they don’t really belong to him. Charles turns the handle on the faucet and splashes his face with cold water. 

It doesn’t help all that much.

He glances around for a hand towel, but it looks like someone’s already put it in the laundry chute. He opens up one of the cabinets instead and finds a stack of washcloths, clean and neatly-rolled. He reaches for one, but his hand pauses on the shelf. 

The cabinet is full of all kinds of toiletries, provided for the crew’s use. Extra toothbrushes, fresh towels, and …. 

Charles doesn’t think he would recognize a box of condoms for what it was, even after Raven’s explanation, if there hadn’t been a small clinical diagram on the side of the package explaining how to put one on. He stares for a moment, cock twitching even at this - simple lines, drawn to resemble an erect penis.

Quickly, he looks to the door, as if expecting to find it open and Alex or someone standing there, staring. Then he reaches for one of the boxes, tugs the cardboard flap on the lid, and opens it. He pulls out a small foil packet. Pinched between his thumb and forefinger he can feel a plastic ring, slipping in his grasp.

On impulse, he puts the condom in his pocket and then closes the box, setting it back on the shelf where it belongs. Next to the boxes of condoms there is a small bottle of a clear gel. Given the location, Charles thinks he doesn’t need a great understanding of human culture to guess its purpose. 

He takes the lube as well, shutting off the bathroom light and heading back to his bed. He feels light as air, head spinning with the rush of his own nerve as he crawls back into bed. He hides the bottle beneath the blankets and lies back, closing his eyes.

The fantasy returns without delay, as if it had been lurking on the fringes of his thoughts all this time. He – he can practically _feel_ it, the way the mattress would dip beneath Erik’s weight as Erik moved up the length of Charles’s body, those long fingers tucking under the waist of Charles’s pants and pulling them down. 

Charles reaches down and mimics the motion, lifting his hips slightly to get the fabric down below his ass, pushing it over his kneecaps and then kicking it off to the foot of the bed. He hesitates for a moment, his hand pressed against his stomach, against the heat of his own skin and the blood pounding through his veins. 

This is not normal. Stars don’t – this doesn't _happen_ for them. This body is foreign to him, and he doesn’t understand why he … why he _wants_ these things. The craving for touch, for the Commander’s – for _Erik’s_ \- touch in particular …. He can’t escape the way Erik feels like a source of gravity sometimes, like Charles will never be able to do anything but simply orbit around him, wanting to touch but never drawing near enough. 

Charles has never needed like this before. He should at least try to resist it, to cling to whatever pieces of his starhood he has left. He should not be so in thrall to the desires of this human form.

But he doesn’t resist. He just slips his hand a few inches further down, curling his fingers around his cock.

His breath catches behind his teeth. It’s a sensation entirely different from the one he got by rubbing himself down against the bed. He just holds himself for a minute, getting used to the weight of his erection against his hand. He squeezes just a little and pleasure shoots up his spine. Erik’s hand would be bigger, of course, his fingers overlapping where they circled round Charles’s shaft. His mouth, maybe, kissing the inside of Charles’s thigh.

After a while, Charles finds himself wanting something more. He plays around with a few different pressures, and then pulling a slow stroke along his dick from base to head. _That_ \- that feels good. Far better than it ought, really. He presses the wrist of his free arm against his mouth and bites down on his own flesh – not hard, just enough to keep himself from groaning out loud. 

He does it again, he falls into a rhythm of it, pulling his grip up and down his shaft as he thinks about Erik’s breath hot on his neck, Erik doing … doing _sex_ , the way Raven said people did it – pushing his hard cock into Charles’s body, stretching him wide open and filling him up, fucking him down into the mattress with strong, deep thrusts. 

Charles pulls his wrist away from his mouth and hastily scrambles it beneath his blankets, feeling around until he finds the bottle of lube. He just – he wants – he _needs_ \- He squirts a dollop of gel into his hand and wets his fingers, pressing his hand down past his ballsack. He just touches himself, first, feeling out the skin around his asshole, puckered and surprisingly soft. Charles spreads his legs just a little bit wider apart and quickens the pace of his hand on his cock. 

He has stopped paying any attention at all to the rest of the room, to whether or not he can hear the sounds of slumber from its other inhabitants. Every part of him has condensed down to _this_ \- to the tight resistance of his body as he slowly pushes his forefinger in. To heat, and oxygen, and the way Charles’s spine arches in that very instant, his eyes flying open. 

He bites his lower lip, thinks - _Erik_ \- and then everything bursts apart, shattering like a fallen glass, pleasure shooting up through his veins and pounding through his groin. His body shudders, muscles clenching down hard around his finger as his cock throbs, something hot and liquid pulsing out of him, pooling on his stomach and smearing his knuckles.

The tide ebbs slowly, but Charles is already pulling his finger out of himself and sitting up in bed, staring at his penis in horror. This – he must be defective, something’s wrong with him, surely he shouldn’t be having … _excretions_. He slides his fingers through the mess on his stomach; it’s white and sticky, unlike any substance Charles has ever seen before. 

He clambers down the ladder, not bothering to pull his pants back on, dashing to the bathroom. In the fluorescent light, he can see the stuff is already starting to dry on his skin, even if his dick is still half-hard between his legs. 

He grabs for a new washcloth, wetting it with warm water in the sink before he sets to scrubbing himself clean, wiping every last trace of – of whatever it is from his stomach and hand. Charles tries to think back to his conversation with Raven in the kitchen, to whether she said anything about … about this. Any possible explanation. 

She had talked about climax, which is almost certainly what that was – it’s what it felt like, at any rate – but nothing was said about any kind of bodily _expulsion._ Charles tosses the used washcloth into the dirty linens basket and leans over the sink, grasping the edge of the counter with both hands. So, what? He could go to the infirmary, but even if he _were_ inclined to try to explain to Moira how he’d encountered this problem in the first place, he’s not sure how he’d manage to communicate it. He doesn’t know enough words to put it in writing. 

_Think logically,_ he tells himself. He has seen infection before, in the memories of ship people. What came out of him was nothing like pus, and there was far too much of it besides. He glances toward the cabinet, at the boxes of condoms. Raven said they prevented pregnancy and disease transmission. How they might protect against disease seems obvious, but pregnancy? Charles is not altogether sure how the mating process goes, for ship people, but he knows they reproduce sexually, which means the involvement of eggs and sperm. 

Ah. Perhaps, then, this is related. Sperm must travel somehow, yes? To fertilize the eggs. Maybe this is how. The substance. 

In fact, the more time passes, the more certain Charles is that what happened was not an abnormality. Just panic of the moment, is all. He was too inexperienced to know any better.

Even so, it is a few minutes before Charles can bring himself to leave the bathroom, stepping softly across the dormitory floor back to his bed. He pulls his pants back on underneath the sheets, out of sight of anyone who might wake up. 

He lies there, awake, for almost an hour. His mind is crowded with thoughts – about his body, about what he did, about why he thought of Erik when he did it. He doesn’t feel guilty, about that. He just doesn’t know what it _means_. What it changes, if anything.

Charles sighs and turns his face toward the pillow again, as if that could muffle some of the confusion. 

It doesn’t. But eventually fatigue creeps up on the fringes of his consciousness and drags him down, blanketing him in fitful sleep. 

The dream does not return.

\--

“Hey, stop hogging the popcorn!”

Raven almost falls into Charles’s lap as she reaches over him to snatch the bag out of Scott’s grasp, giving him an admonishing look before settling back down in her own seat and popping a handful of kernels into her mouth. 

“I wasn’t _hogging_ ,” Scott retorts. “I’d only had it for ten seconds! You want to talk about hogging, you should be talking to - ”

“ _Shh_.”

“You _shh_ , Alex, there’s nothing to hear!”

“I’m trying to watch!”

“Yeah, but you don’t need it to be dead quiet to watch a fucking - ”

“The both of ye, shut up,” Logan growls from the back row.

Silence falls, broken only by the crunch of popcorn in Raven’s mouth. They are all sitting in the labspace, gathered around a large computer screen on which Hank is displaying an image of two galaxies colliding some several tens of thousands of lightyears away. Hank and Scott had dragged them all away from dinner early for this, making cryptic comments about ‘stellar phenomena’ and ‘once in a lifetime, I swear to god, you won’t want to miss it.’ 

Charles knew what went on, technically, during a galactic collision. He had never experienced one himself, though it was projected that his home galaxy would collide with its nearest neighbor in a few billion years or so. It’s beautiful to look at. Two spiral galaxies, locked together in a sinuous curve, their centers glowing like two white eyes in the black sky. He wishes he could be there right now – a star in their midst with his entire world in flux, burning with the thrill of something new.

“Why isn’t it moving?” Alex says after a moment, and Raven smacks him on the back of the head.

“Because it takes something like _ten million years_ for galaxies to collide, idiot.”

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?”

“Oh, I dunno, crack open a book sometime, maybe?”

This time it’s Darwin shushing them – though it takes a sharp look from Azazel for Alex and Raven to finally clamp their mouths shut, uneasily avoiding his gaze. 

“So,” Darwin says after a few moments, looking over toward Hank, “what exactly _happens_ when galaxies collide? Wouldn’t the stars run into each other?”

Charles is shaking his head before he even realizes he’s doing it – but no one is looking at him; they’re all watching Hank, waiting for his response.

“No,” Hank says. “Galaxies are quite large. There’s a lot of distance between stars, for one. And secondly, stars are not very dense, so even if they _did_ collide, they’d just pass through one another. What we usually see happening is a change in galactic morphology. For example, since these two galaxies are spiral galaxies, they’ll become elliptic. And sometimes there’s enough friction between the gas and dust of the two colliding galaxies that it can actually lead to new stars being formed.”

“Cool,” Darwin says, nodding slowly, gaze fixed on the screen. “So, spiral galaxies - they have supermassive black holes at the center, yeah? What happens when those hit?”

“Sometimes they merge,” Hank says. “Sometimes one black hole gets ejected from the combined galaxy. It’s hard to predict, even with modern simulation tech, but if you will allow me a quick digression - ”

“If I may interrupt.” 

Everyone turns around, looking over their shoulders at XO Emma Frost, who is standing in the doorway, Moira hovering just behind her with a steel tray in her hands. Charles’s focus stays fixed on Emma, who looks far too smug for his comfort. The back of Charles’s mind can’t help running through all the other times he’s seen that look on human faces, through the eyes and memories of others. It’s a look of victorious self-satisfaction, the kind that tends to involve someone else getting hurt.

Emma’s gaze meets his.

“Charles,” she says, “this will only take a moment.” She lifts a hand, waving Moira forward. “Just a little blood draw.”

Charles locks down his telepathy even as his spine stiffens. _Why?_ he wants to demand. He’s healthy. He’s not sick. He doesn't need to see a doctor, so why is Moira here? And ... his blood. Why would they want his blood?

“What for?” Raven demands, asking the question for him.

Moira sets the tray on the empty chair to Charles’s right, kneeling on the floor in front of him. Charles stares at the syringe with its long, sharp needle – at the two empty vials waiting to be filled. It’s pure reflex that has him clutching his arm to his chest, hand gripped around his own wrist as if to keep it out of Moira’s reach, suddenly feeling as if something venomous is crawling beneath his skin. 

“We’re hoping it can tell us something about where Charles is from,” Emma says. Her voice is too soft. Charles doesn’t trust it. “Anything we can do to help him get home.”

Moira touches the back of Charles’s arm gently. “It’s okay,” she says. "It's just a small prick. It’ll be over before you know it.”

Charles is worried that, if he releases his grip on his own wrist, his arm will just start trembling uncontrollably. But it doesn’t. He is completely steady as he lowers it down into his lap, forearm turned up. 

He cannot show fear. Never show fear in the face of an immediate threat. 

He just hopes Emma is still far enough away that she can’t see the perspiration on the palm of his hand, or the way he has bitten the inside of his cheek as if that pain might distract him. Charles refuses to look at the needle, focusing instead on Moira’s gloved hands as she loops a rubber tourniquet above his elbow, pulling tight. He wishes they were alone. If they were, maybe he would be able to resist – play up the fear of needles, until Moira refused to draw his blood on moral grounds. But everyone is watching, and Charles doesn’t want to make a scene.

“Make a fist,” Moira instructs, and he does, nails biting into his flesh.

She pats the crook of his arm, and Charles watches one of his veins swell, blood trapped by the tourniquet and unable to pulse upward, back to his heart. He closes his eyes, then – forces himself to take in slow, calming breaths. It will be over soon. Soon. 

His fingers are starting to go numb, pins prickling beneath his nails as Moira tears something papery. The bitter smell of alcohol, cold and wet on his skin. Rough cloth, next. And then he hears the clatter of plastic on metal. 

“On the count of three,” Moira says. “All right?”

He nods, twice.

“One … two …”

But on two, she’s already pushing in. A brief spark of pain shooting up through his arm, and then nothing but a dull burning sensation, exacerbated for a split second as she snaps a vial onto the needle. 

Chalres dares to open his eyes, stealing a peek down at his arm. The plastic tubing connected to the needle is dark with blood – and he can see it spurting into the vial, filling quickly. It’s only a couple of seconds before Moira is pulling that vial free and fitting in a new one. 

“Not as bad as you thought?” Moira asks, smiling.

He gives her a small smile in return and shakes his head. It hardly even hurts at all, when she undoes the tourniquet, pressing a cloth to his arm before she draws the needle out. 

“All done,” she says, pressing a piece of tape over the fabric on his arm. “Sorry about that.”

Charles just shrugs one shoulder and she stands, collecting all her materials on her tray and nodding toward Emma. 

“We’ll get these results back to you as soon as we can, Charles,” says Emma. Her eyes are too bright, like pale blue stars, looking at him as if she wishes she could peel back the surface of his skin with will alone. 

He forces himself to nod and look pleased, even if every part of him wants nothing more than to steal those vials back and break them on the floor. 

He doesn’t have the first clue what she really wants with his blood, but it can’t possibly be for his own good. This is about something else. About Emma, and Emma’s need to figure him out. He doesn’t doubt that she has the best intentions for her crew, but whether those intentions involve preserving Charles’s safety is less clear. 

Charles watches them go, pressing his thumb over the bandage at his elbow. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but he wishes it would. He needs something to take away from the way his head has started to ache, his telepathy all but writhing to break free, flailing and fighting against razor wire. 

He excuses himself a few minutes later, mind howling against the loss of the others’ company - like something gone rabid within him, tearing itself apart until Charles has nothing left. Until he can do nothing but turn out the lights and curl on his bed, and hope he has the strength to keep himself restrained for just one more minute, one more hour, one more day.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see a simulation (created from still images of different galaxies) of two galaxies colliding in very-sped-up-time [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXy3B2K47Qg). Pictures captured by the Hubble telescope.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry this chapter was so long in coming! Holidays + Big Bang + work = took over my life.
> 
> Thanks again to the lovely **Tahariel** for betaing this. Her patience is extraordinary. 
> 
> I’m also very grateful to **Kannibal** for her fantastically insightful comments on this chapter. The fic was vastly improved by them. Thanks as well to **Subtilior** for the meta and inspiration!

It is an entirely new challenge, Charles finds – looking at Erik without thinking about the _other_ Erik. The one who had pushed his cock hard and slow into Charles’s body, groaned out Charles’s name in that same voice which now corrects the structure of his characters, touched Charles’s skin with hands that are now writing out short, chaste sentences about engines and rocket fuel. 

Charles’s gaze keeps sliding away every time Erik meets his eyes. He can’t help thinking that all of it – every sordid detail, every lascivious thing Charles wants Erik to do with that mouth – is painted across his face for the world to see. Worse still, his cock has been half-hard ever since Erik leaned over his shoulder to start correcting his lines, his thumb brushing the side of Charles’s wrist, a single point of contact that _burns_ , like touching a sun with bare human hands.

Like this, Erik is a devastating force of gravity. Charles cannot escape him. He is just drawn _in_ , and he knows this is how the world will end, not with a bang but with the soft curve of Erik’s lips and Charles’s heart skipping a beat, and sooner or later he will not be able to resist it, the way he wants to meld them together whole and perfect, pouring himself into Erik’s mind, binding them, destroying _him._

He presses too hard with his pen and the nib breaks. Erik crosses to the cabinet to get him a new one and Charles sits there with his hands held palm-up, skin stained black with ink. He imagines all that black ink welling up in the hollows of his palms and spilling over, dripping from the tips of his fingers and puddling on the page, darkening his nails, slick as oil and just as pungent. 

“Here,” Erik says, handing him a new pen and dabbing up the ink that’s spattered on the table. There are only a few drops; Charles sees that now. His hands are not drenched the way he had imagined. Just small smudges, like soot pressed into the curved lines of his fingerprints. 

Charles pulls out a fresh sheet of paper and tries again. It’s a bit easier, now that Erik is not standing so close. Where Charles doesn’t have to wonder if he really _can_ smell Erik’s detergent, or the whisky they’d been drinking earlier.

At least his arousal has relented somewhat, since the pen broke. Minor blessings.

\--

With time, Charles starts to find that his days revolve around this. The lessons with Erik, those few stolen hours in the library, the conversations they have after and the way Erik talks to him like he knows Charles understands. Like they understand _each other_ , a courtesy which should not be nearly as gratifying as it is.

But at first, Charles hadn’t really noticed it, the way the others raise their voices in his presence and slow down their words, as if they don’t expect him to follow. The way even Raven seems too protective of him, as if she fears he might run off and get himself killed if not carefully watched over. 

He tells himself it doesn’t hurt. ‘Hurt’ is the feeling in his head when he pulls the razor wires too tight and it feels as if his entire spine is on fire. ‘Hurt’ is accidentally placing his hand on a hot engine. ‘Hurt’ is the way his stomach aches, sometimes, when he thinks of how he told Erik the truth but Erik did not understand.

The blackness, when it takes him, is heavier than ever. And every time he thinks he has escaped it he finds it there, waiting, like an invisible shadow-hand resting on his shoulder.

It has nothing to do with the rest of the crew. Not really. Charles just – it’s unbearable, at times, how silenced he has come to feel. His voice, his unique ability among the stars to influence other minds – these powers were everything, once. And now he feels as if he is trying to find color in a darkened room, guessing at the things he cannot see.

Once he stood on the catwalk and chose a specific star: Athena, a red giant some two hundred light years away, and he thought – what if he could speak to _that_ star? Only that one. Surely the curse applies just to the ship people, after all. If he could focus his mind enough, make it sharp and directed as a blade, he could touch her. 

In the end, though, he does nothing. He can’t risk what would happen if he slipped. Just one mistake, one thread of telepathy gone loose, and this ship would be full of ghosts.

\--

Tuesday night, Charles finds the library empty and dark. The door is unlocked and so he lets himself in anyway, assuming Erik is running late with his duties on the bridge. He turns on the lamp at the desk and sits, practicing his characters. After a while, though, that gets tedious, without Erik’s company and soft-murmured corrections. 

He sets the pen down and wanders the room, trying to see how many of the titles on the bookshelves he can make out. All that accomplishes, though, is to throw into rather sharp relief just how far he still has to go before attaining true literacy. 

He settles down in his usual armchair by the cold hearth – but after a second he switches over to Erik’s chair instead. The leather-covered cushions give beneath his weight and he tilts his head back, eyes closed. Charles imagines that he can still feel the warmth of Erik’s body, as if he had been occupying this seat only a few moments before. Erik’s glass of wine, on the table by his right hand. A dog-eared book tucked between the cushion and the arm, marked where he last left off. Erik’s thigh would rest _here_ , knee bent and his foot settled back beneath the chair, the toe of his shoe caught on the lowest rung.

What would Erik say, if he came in and found Charles like this? Would he even notice? Would he realize the implications of it? Charles is not sure he understands the implications, himself. He wants Erik, that much is clear. Despite his better judgment, despite everything his star-ness should have shielded him against, it is what it is.

At the very least, Charles is nearly certain Erik has no idea of the things Charles thinks about when he looks at him. Nothing about their interactions has changed, at least for Erik. He does not shy away from touching Charles, when necessary, nor has he stopped attending their lessons.

Until tonight, of course. The realization slots neatly into place and Charles feels as if he has swallowed something hard and cold. Tonight, Erik did not come.

Of course, Erik had _said_ there would be nights when he couldn’t make it. He’s the Commander. Certainly he has things to do. Important things. It was kind of him, to agree to do this for Charles, but of course it cannot be his priority.

But even so – what if?

Charles knows it must be inappropriate, what he feels for Erik. He understands better, now, what happened in the kitchen a few days ago. It’s not … “hospitable,” Erik had said. Which means he could never reciprocate. Just the thought of Erik knowing, and thinking less of him for it, makes his skin feel too-hot.

This is ridiculous, he tells himself. He has no idea what Erik thinks, what he knows, or why he isn’t here. Any explanation he can invent is just that: an invention. The simplest answer is just that Erik is busy – so what good does it do, imagining all the possible reasons for his absence?

No good at all, in the end. Charles’s stomach is still twisting in on itself, something uncomfortable tingling behind his sternum. He wraps both arms around himself, grasping his biceps, as if that could keep him from shaking. It feels as if he has such little control over his own thoughts, these days; they just keep spinning out of reach, chasing down improbabilities and pretending they’re realities. 

Two hours later, when Erik still hasn’t come, Charles pulls himself up out of the chair and leaves. He turns off the desk lamp when he goes, though he lingers just for a moment in the doorway, as if he still expects to hear Erik’s footsteps coming down that hall at any moment. There’s only silence.

Without lessons to fill his evening, Charles finds he isn’t sure where to go. Maybe he is supposed to return to the dormitories, to sit quietly on his bunk while the others gossip and joke around, trading references he doesn’t understand. Or perhaps he could return to the catwalk and look out at all the stars who could speak to him but choose silence instead. 

The library door falls shut behind Charles. He considers pushing it open again to lock it from the inside, but eventually decides against it. If Erik cared about the room staying off-limits, it wouldn’t have been open when Charles came by this evening. 

He heads back in the general direction of the dormitories, taking a few unnecessary detours, half-hoping he’ll get lost in the curving halls and the endless elevator shafts. He doesn’t. 

Darwin finds him when he finally makes it back to the residential wing. 

“We’ve been looking for you,” he says. “You’re needed in the medical bay.”

Charles’s heart stumbles in his chest. The tubes of blood Emma had Moira take from his arm. Whatever she was testing – is this it, then? They have results? Charles’s mind immediately spins off in a thousand different directions, grasping after possible explanations. They want to know more about where he’s from, Emma had said. Well, they’re unlikely to find that in his blood. Is there something else? Perhaps they’re simply seeking to understand more about how he survived out on the cold surface of Thanet, naked and without a breathing apparatus.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what Emma wants, and he doesn’t know nearly enough about human medical technology to know how a blood test would help her find answers.

Charles takes off for the medical bay without waiting for Darwin to explain further. Whatever it is, he wants to be told now. Straight from Emma’s own mouth. 

He hasn’t been to the infirmary since he woke there, the night of his exile, but he still remembers the way. He’s seen it dozens of times on the maps Erik lent him, has walked the halls nearby on his explorations around the ship. 

The entire bay was built with fiberglass walls, presumably to allow the physician to keep an eye on his or her patient at all times. Perfect visibility, no crisis going unnoticed. Charles can see Moira inside, wearing a white coat, with an instrument of some kind - _stethoscope_ , his memory provides a second later – slung around her neck. She is leaning over something, both hands out of sight from where Charles stands, her attention fixed.

He moves closer and the door of the infirmary whooshes open automatically. Moira straightens and turns toward him, beckoning silently for him to approach. She’s in a different room, he sees now; some sort of observation chamber. Not the room he was in when he first woke; that’s down the hall, he remembers. It didn’t have glass walls.

Two steps to the left, and that’s when he sees him. There, on the bed, hooked up to three bags of fluid and a vitals monitor, lies Erik. He’s not moving.

Whatever worries Charles may have been entertaining about the blood draw – whatever insecurities about Erik’s absence from their lesson – everything, everything else in the entire world – all of it drops away. He walks slowly because he is afraid to run. He’s afraid that running means it’s serious. Running means there’s a reason to be concerned. Running would betray the way it feels as if the one constant in Charles’s life has suddenly been ripped away.

So it is with measured care that he crosses the medical bay and enters the observation room. The door slides cleanly shut behind him.

“Oh, good,” Moira says. “Darwin found you.”

But Charles doesn’t have eyes for her. He can’t stop staring at Erik. Erik, who is so – so _pale_ , the color of the corpses Charles has seen on the more freshly-destroyed ships, as if someone has drained the blood from his body and left him here, limp and unresponsive. His eyelashes are like soot-stains on his cheeks. There are too many wires – a whole handful of them snaking down beneath the collar of Erik’s shirt, plastic tubing disappearing into the vein at the crook of his arm. Some awful beeping sound blares in Charles’s ears. 

He jerks his gaze back round toward Moira, who has a strange expression on her face, something between a smile and – not. He can’t interpret it, not without the aid of his telepathy. There’s a quality to it that makes him want to stiffen, to thrust his shoulders back and his chin outward, to meet her eyes even as he clenches his jaw.

“He’s fine,” Moira says after a few seconds have passed. Charles immediately resents her for waiting this long to say so. “Just a little overworked, that’s all. I called you here because I have business to attend to, and I need someone to keep an eye on him in the interim. I don’t expect you to run into any problems; he’s sedated, and will be for a few more hours.”

Charles does not find this very reassuring.

“Just sit with him,” Moira says, patting him twice on the shoulder. “He enjoys your company. I think it will be good for him, to have you here.”

But – god, Charles hardly feels qualified for this. What if something happens? What if one of those machines malfunctions, or the fluids get blocked, or Erik sleeps and never wakes up? 

He has a thousand questions, and no way to ask any of them. 

Moira leaves him there, standing silent by Erik’s bed, hands hanging slack and useless at his sides.

After a while, he dares to look at Erik again. Nothing has changed. Even Erik’s mouth is still parted just-so, and Charles finds himself glancing down at Erik’s chest just to make sure he’s actually breathing. And there it is: the subtle rise-fall of Erik’s ribcage, shifting beneath the fabric of his shirt. Charles has never seen Erik in pajamas before. Perhaps something about it should feel wrong, or unfinished, but it doesn’t. Maybe Charles ought to think that Erik seems smaller or gentler in sleep, but the truth is that he is every bit as domineering as he is in full uniform – and if it weren’t for how pale he is, Charles could imagine him opening his eyes a second later, tossing off the blankets and tearing the tubes from his arm, demanding to know who the hell is piloting his ship. His expression may be relaxed, but it does nothing to soften the sharp lines of his cheekbones or the angle of his mouth. 

Charles sits, after a while, pulling a chair up next to Erik’s bed. He realizes a few minutes after Moira has left that she never told him when she would be coming back; she only said that Erik would be asleep for a long while yet. If Erik wakes up and Moira isn’t here, what then? Charles still doesn’t really understand why Erik is sick, and he almost certainly doesn’t have the vocabulary to write it out to explain to Erik, even if he _did_ understand. 

He glances round to see if Moira has already left. She is there, though blurred, two rooms away, through all those panes of glass. She’s standing with Hank in what looks to be a laboratory of some kind, Hank leaning over a microscope and Moira gesturing at him with her clipboard. They’re running tests of some kind. Tests that necessitate Moira being away from her patient, perhaps for several hours? Charles thinks that probably ought to be concerning in and of itself, for any number of reasons. 

The soft sound of movement has Charles glancing back toward the bed – but Erik’s only shifting in his sleep, tilting his face in Charles’s direction. A stray lock of hair has fallen over his eyes. Charles hesitates for a moment, caught in the web between what he wants to do and what he _should_ do. Then he gives in, reaching out to brush those few strands back. His touch grazes Erik’s brow. His skin is warm; Charles finds that reassuring. He gives himself license to go just a little further, combing his fingers back through Erik’s hair. Just to make sure it stays put. 

He is not sure what good it does, him sitting here next to Erik while Erik is unconscious. Erik has no awareness of his presence, after all. Charles knows the ship people believe that coma patients can hear you, if you talk to them, but Moira is well aware that Charles cannot speak. 

He wishes he could. Not just because there is so much he needs to tell Erik, but because he wants Erik to hear his voice. Because he likes the idea of Erik hearing him, even beneath all the heavy layers of sedation, letting Charles paint a story for him on the canvas of his dreams. The star people know that the more you care about someone, the more connected you are. Your affection for him ties strong bonds between your minds, a tie that cannot be broken, a tie that stretches across time and space. 

But such ties are built with telepathy, and Charles has not been afforded that luxury.

He turns his chair so that it is facing Erik’s bed more directly. He might not be able to speak to Erik directly, but he can still pretend. 

“I’m a star, you know,” he says – doesn’t say - _thinks_ , quietly and to himself, careful not to let the words escape. “Not like a joke. An actual star. Or I was, anyway. It feels like so long ago now.” 

Long ago, or yesterday. Time passes so much more slowly, in a ship person’s mind. They have no concept of the infinite. And now Charles is locked here with them, living out each day as if it were a lifetime. 

“We have souls. No one expects us to, but we do. So I don’t blame you, for not believing me, when I tried to tell you. You didn’t know any better.” It still hurt, of course. Even now, Charles can’t stop thinking about that night. A small betrayal, to be sure, a tiny scar hidden somewhere no one else can see.

“I used to be so infatuated with the ship people.” He’s still infatuated. Even after being on this ship for weeks, it’s still novel in a thousand tiny ways. “All of you. You’re so … hardy. Your lives are short, but you make them meaningful. Every single human has such magnificent purpose. Even when you die, you have purpose. You go on, to something else. I envy you that.”

He doesn’t want to think about Erik dying. Charles cannot stand the thought of it. He isn’t sure if what he hates is the idea of Erik being dead, or that of losing him. Both. 

Of course, he reminds himself, that’s not what is happening here. Moira said Erik is overworked, that’s all. Too many late nights. Human minds are fragile, Charles remembers that much from the time he used to spend in them. Erik has always seemed strong, but the nature of humanity itself is no weakness. All ship people have their limits, and Erik found his. Charles refuses to think of that as a flaw.

“I think you would like the stars,” he says/thinks. His words echo off the shields he has built around his own mind, reverberating back to him. An endless feedback loop. It makes his head hurt. “You have a lot in common with them. You see things so clearly. You somehow always manage to know what I want to say, when I can’t _say_ anything at all. You might find it interesting to know, stars are as varied as humans are. You have your mutations, and we have ours.”

Charles doesn’t remember when he took Erik’s hand, but at some point he must have. Their fingers are laced together, Charles’s thumb rubbing small circles on Erik’s skin. It’s not the same as a telepathic connection, but it’s something. Even if Erik’s hand is loose and limp from the drugs.

“I know telepathy is a mutation for your people, like it is with Emma, but for stars it’s the main mode of communication. Where we vary is in the other things we can do. The particular ways it manifests differ, star by star. Some can quantum tunnel and reappear anywhere else in the universe, easy as you please.” Like Azazel, it occurs to him. The stars are not really as different from humans as they wish to believe. Something to consider for later, perhaps. “They don’t do it often, though. You can imagine the kind of impact the loss of the star’s mass would have on the planets orbiting it.” 

In fact, he’s sure Erik could calculate the precise impact, mathematically, on the smallest asteroid trapped in the star’s endless loop. 

“Other stars can create fantastic illusions, so realistic that even the oldest stars are fooled by them. Some can slow or quicken time at their will.” He lifts a hand to his temple, trying to rub out the dull ache that has taken residence there. “As for me – well, I can control other stars.”

Charles’s smile is small and tight, there for a moment and then gone.

“Humans, too, I suppose, if I wanted. I could force you to do anything. To _believe_ anything. And you would never even know I was doing it. That's it. That’s my gift. I’m not the only one with this talent, of course, but I am certainly the strongest.”

Young as he was, he could still have shredded the mind of the Eldest herself, if so he had desired. 

“My gift made me dangerous, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now. I made the mistake of proving just how dangerous I was, when I tried to change someone’s mind about eliminating the human race. They exiled me.”

Well.

Technically.

“They executed me,” he revises. “Or they meant to, I suspect. Most stars who are forced into human form don’t survive very long.”

He turns Erik’s hand over in his, to examine the lines patterning his palm. He traces the longest of them, curving around his thumb in toward the center of his hand, branching off toward the wrist into two forks. It’s much deeper and bolder than the line that mirrors it on Charles’s own palm. 

Then the patterns he traces start to take on a different meaning. He _writes_ , sketching the characters on Erik’s skin with his fingertips, using what vocabulary Erik has taught him to say:

“I don’t mind as much as I used to. I … I like it, being here. I still miss my family, but that does me little good. They don’t want me anymore. _You_ do. Or at the very least, you let me stay here.”

But there’s a time limit, even on that. They will be at Sihwa soon, and then Charles will be put off the ship and presumably left to fend for himself. And he will never see Erik again.

He’d always known, on some level, that this was the eventual ending to their story, but somehow it had never managed to hit him quite like this. Charles jerks his hand away from Erik’s, covering his own mouth to keep himself silent.

Forever. For Charles, now, that means a couple dozen years if he’s lucky. But even twenty, thirty years without Erik feels interminable. 

It shouldn't be like this. He only met Erik a few weeks ago. What right does he have to be so attached? What right to demand Erik keep him on his ship, to let him into his crew, let him into his life and – if Charles had his way – into his bed? 

He has no claim to Erik. He is a guest, and nothing more. A guest Erik was kind enough to teach, a guest who was given the privilege of sitting next to Erik’s bed and holding his hand as he slept. It means nothing. 

He looks at Erik all the same, tries to memorize all that he can. The subtle red in Erik’s hair, the way his jaw has gone scruffy after a couple of days without shaving. His smooth almond-shaped nails and their elegant fingers. The tiny scar above Erik’s mouth, white and barely-noticeable.

He doesn’t want to forget a single thing.

\--

Erik wakes three hours later, as predicted. His eyes dart quickly around the ceiling, never resting on one place for long, before Moira hurries over and pushes another syringe of drugs into his IV. 

Then he sleeps again.

\--

Raven finds him in the medical bay around hour five. Charles is slumped low in the chair by Erik’s bedside, having refused Moira’s attempts to urge him back to the dormitory to sleep. 

He doesn’t want to stop watching Erik. He wants to be there, if Erik wakes like that again, groundless and lost. He wants Erik’s eyes to fall on him, instead. He’s not sure if that would help fix whatever’s wrong with Erik, but it’s worth waiting, all the same.

“Scott said you might be in here,” Raven says. “It’s almost midnight, you know. Everyone else is already in bed.”

Charles shrugs one shoulder and does not take his eyes off Erik.

“When Moira asked you to keep an eye on him, I don’t think she meant you weren’t allowed to _blink._ ”

Charles finally turns around, looking at her over his shoulder. She’s in her pajamas – a plain white ensemble that is striking against her blue skin. She nods down toward Erik, who, at least, is looking a little less pale than he was a few hours ago. 

“How’s he doing?” she asks.

Charles isn’t sure how to answer that question. So he just looks away, back to Erik. One of his IV bags, Charles notices, is almost empty. He should show Moira.

After a moment, he hears the soft pad of Raven’s slippers against the floor, and then she’s touching his shoulder – just lightly, with the very tips of her fingers, as if too much pressure and he might break. “He’s going to be fine, you know,” she says. “He’s not sick. Not in the way he looks, at least.”

That’s enough to have Charles twisting around to look at her again, frowning. 

“Oh,” she says. “Moira didn’t tell you.”

He shakes his head.

Raven sighs, running her fingers back through her hair. “Well. I don’t – honestly, I’m not sure it’s my place to say.”

A few seconds pass, and then:

“It’s not really a secret, though, I suppose. He isn’t ashamed of it.” 

Suddenly Charles isn’t sure he wants Raven to tell him at all. It should be Erik. If it’s Erik’s story to tell, then Raven should keep it so. But all the same … he can’t think about Erik lying in that bed, looking like _that_ , and not want to know why. It’s not as if he can ask Erik, after all. And – 

“Erik grew up on Isar, in the Eastern galaxies,” Raven says. “His entire family was killed during the mutant massacres twenty years ago. I still don’t know how he escaped, but he - remembers it, sometimes.” She pauses, and Charles can hear her quiet intake of breath. “Especially if he hasn’t been sleeping well, or if he overtaxes himself. He’ll relive the whole thing inside his mind.” 

Her hand falls away from Charles’s shoulder. 

“He was on the bridge when it happened. It was … bad. He got – well. His power, you know. It’s … if it gets out of hand, it’s not a great thing to have onboard a boat made out of metal. Moira had to sedate him. Erik tried to order her to stand down, of course, but medical can override even the Commander in special cases.” A soft sound, almost like a laugh. “Yeah, he’s not going to be too happy about that when he wakes up.”

Charles looks back to Erik and tries to imagine it, the terror Erik must have felt. His entire family – destroyed. Stolen from him when he was still too young to do anything about it. He tries to imagine what it must feel like, to have his ability escape his control. 

Charles lives in fear of that every day, what might happen if his own power proves stronger than he is. He wonders if Erik feels that same constant fear, clinging to the vertebrae at the base of his neck, every now and then spreading its dark tendrils up into his mind and clouding out all rational thought until there’s nothing but the blind terror of it, of watching everything slip away in a single instant.

They both carry death in the palms of their hands and hold on tight, hold on as hard as they can.

“We all admire him,” Raven says softly from behind him. “He brought us together. The things he has done for mutants … you have no idea, you can’t _possibly_ have any idea. He’s a good man, Charles. I hope you’ll always remember that, whatever else.”

She’s gone an instant later – and it’s not until the door has already shut behind her that Charles is turning around again, halfway to standing, grasping the back of his chair with one hand, his question frozen on his lips.

\--


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so, so much to the amazing **Tahariel** \- not only for her brilliant beta work on this fic, but for her brilliant friendship. You know I can never thank you enough.
> 
> Thanks also to everyone in xmentales chat who encouraged me to finish this chapter, from the word war where I only had to write "just one sentence and stop TALKING for chrissakes" to the one where I wrote 600 words. Y'all are awesome.
> 
> And thank you most of all to anyone who is still reading this monster. I know it's been a long time since my last update. I hope you enjoy~ <3
> 
> \--
> 
> I also wrote a little [drabble](http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com/post/36467841503/poorly-planned-outdoor-romantic-dinner-failure) off this fic that you can find over at my Tumblr if you are so inclined. :)

Despite every one of his efforts, Charles is not there when Erik wakes.

At some point, his body falls asleep, and when it wakes again someone has moved him to a cot in a different room of the infirmary. He can hear Erik’s voice through the wall, something about firing Moira as soon as they’re planetside. Charles pushes himself up and swings his legs off the side of the cot, stumbling a little, even now not entirely comfortable with his own weight. Shouldering his way out the door of his cell, he rounds the corner to where Erik is sitting up in his bed, tablet open on his lap, Raven standing by with her hands clasped behind her back and listening attentively.

“It’s a matter of autonomy,” Erik is saying. “I had it under control. I’ve taken us this far, and I can take us all the way.”

“I know you can,” Raven says. Her voice is soft, gentle. “We all believe in you. But you can’t deny that the attacks are getting worse, and more frequent, the closer we get to - “

Erik’s gaze catches Charles’s over Raven’s shoulder and he holds up a hand to stop her mid-sentence. Raven glances round almost immediately, scaled brows lifting.

“Charles,” she says. “There you are. Sorry we had to move you.” She turns back to Erik. “Charles here has been sitting at your side ever since he found out you were sick,” Raven tells him, lips quirking upward. “But eventually he fell asleep, and we all felt so sorry for him, slumped down in that hard chair for hours on end ….”

“Interesting,” Erik says. He’s still looking at Charles. “You were in my dream, you know.” He doesn’t elaborate any more than that, and Charles has no way of asking him to.

“Was he?” Raven looks far more interested in this bit of news than Charles thinks she has any right to be. 

“Raven, go track down Moira and find out exactly how long I have until these drugs wear off.”

Raven’s still grinning as she ducks out of the room, glancing back over her shoulder once before disappearing into the hallway. 

Charles stands where he is, halfway between the door and the bed. He decides to mimic Raven’s pseudo-military posture and clasp his hands behind his back, if only to avoid the urge to start wringing his fingers in plain sight. He wants to ask if Erik is okay, but even if he could, it seems like a stupid question - Erik’s awake, and seems to be back to his old self, if a little bit pale. And even were he more obviously sick, Charles knows he’d resent the implication of weakness.

But while it might have been one thing while Erik was unconscious, to sit by his bedside clutching his hand, now it feels like it might be an invasion. Charles isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s the way Erik flinched away, when Charles took his hand their first lesson, all that time ago. He can’t tell if things between them have changed enough that something like that might be acceptable now, and he finds himself wishing, not for the first time, that he’d paid more attention to ship people’s thoughts regarding their own social norms and mores, back when he still had the ability to listen.

Erik lifts a hand and gestures for him to approach. Charles is grateful just for the certainty of knowing what Erik wants from him. He sits down in the chair by Erik’s bedside - they haven’t moved that away, at any rate - and crosses his legs at the ankles, grasping his knees with both hands.

“Relax,” Erik says, with a quiet laugh. “You look as nervous as a cadet sitting his first performance review. You should know by now: I don’t bite. Not always, anyway.”

Charles attempts a smile, but it feels weak on his lips. He wishes Raven hadn’t told Erik that Charles had been sitting with him the whole time. It makes him feel hot inside, too hot. Of course he wanted Erik to wake up, and he didn’t like the idea of Erik being left alone, but something about the way Raven had put it makes him feel like something is shriveling in his chest.

“I appreciate your concern,” Erik says, “but there’s no need for it. I’m not an invalid, you know.”

Charles almost says: _I never thought you were._ But the look of reproach on his face must have been response enough, because Erik grins, more sincerely this time.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Of course you weren’t suggesting anything of the sort. It’s only - for a moment you seemed - well. I must not be as good at reading faces as I thought. MacTaggert’s drugs, no doubt. They always leave me feeling a bit … altered.”

Charles keeps his gaze fixed on Erik’s, hoping it will push away the memories of how Erik had looked before, when he was unconscious. So pale, the hollows around his eyes like great pits in his face. Erik’s eyes are open and alert now - the same cool, metallic grey they’ve always been. Charles used to find the color unsettling. Now, it steadies him.

They sit in silence, but it’s a silence that is more comfortable than those Charles falls into with the rest of the crew. Sometimes it can feel like the others are still expecting him to speak, as if he’ll open his mouth and words will come pouring out eventually, if only they wait long enough. Erik has no such expectations. 

Maybe it’s the warm comfort of that silence, or maybe it’s a moment of temporary madness - driven insane by his own worry for Erik’s well-being - but Charles can’t help himself either way. It feels … _right_ , to reach across the bed and rest his fingertips atop the pale inside of Erik’s wrist.

To his very great surprise, Erik does not immediately yank his arm away. He simply stares down at the place where their skin meets, his lips slightly parted as if on the cusp of speech, some unvoiced thought trapped in his throat. Charles knows that feeling too well. He lives with it every day, and eventually he is certain he’ll die with it.

He thinks about leaning forward and pressing his lips just above his fingers, to that tendon that draws taut between the base of Erik’s palm and his forearm, to feel the warmth of Erik’s flesh in an entirely new way. The idea skirts dangerously close to some of the fantasies Charles has been letting himself indulge in as of late - and maybe that means he ought to repress it, but he _wants_ to give in, to give himself at least this - that even if he must sit here, restrained to the touch of his fingertips alone, in his mind he is settling on that bed with Erik’s hips between his thighs, kissing his mouth and at long last falling headlong into the glorious depths of his mind.

Some part of it must be betrayed on Charles’s face, because a second later Erik draws his arm away, closing his own hand round his wrist, as if to protect it. “Charles,” he says, and he isn’t meeting Charles’s eyes anymore. “Since MacTaggert has exiled me to the brig, as it were, I need someone to represent me on the bridge from time to time. Right now I don’t trust a single one of them to know what the hell they’re doing, so I need you to tell them.”

Charles’s hand still lies, empty, on the bed sheets.

Erik lifts his head to nod in the direction of the table pushed against the far wall. “Bring me a pen and paper.”

Charles obeys, if only to have something to do with his arms or legs, both of which have started to feel strangely limp and useless, like old abandoned parts. Erik takes them from his hands when he returns, bending his knees to prop the paper up against his thighs. For a while Charles just watches him write - not in the neat, legible script Charles has become familiar with, but the unreadable scrawl of Erik’s own notes, the ones he makes on the blueprints Charles has seen spread out on his desk in the library. 

He folds the paper twice and hands it back over to Charles when he’s finished, clipping the note to the sheets. “Give this to XO Frost,” he says. “I can trust you to do that, can’t I?”

Charles nods.

“I thought so. You’ll need my keycard; it’s on the table with my jacket. You remember the way to the bridge?”

Another nod.

“It took Logan four months to stop getting lost aboard ship. You’ve already broken his record, then.” Erik’s lips curve up in a strange smile, not quite like the ones Charles has seen him wear before. “Go on, then,” he says. “I’ll see you when you come back.”

And so Charles goes.

\--

It feels strange, swiping Erik’s card outside the bridge. But that is nothing compared to how it feels to step out onto that stainless steel floor alone, the doors sliding shut behind him and every eye in the room turning his way, all conversation immediately gone silent. Emma Frost is sitting in the Commander’s chair as if she thinks she belongs there, all sleek white elegance, one single long fingernail tapping at her jaw as she lifts a brow in Charles’s direction.

“What have we here?” she says.

Charles’s heart immediately goes dead and heavy as a rock, dropping into the pit of his stomach.

“Are you lost, little boy?” Emma says. Her lips are too pink. An unnatural pink, like they’ve been stained that way. “It’s easy to get into trouble when you don’t have the Commander guarding your every step, isn’t it?”

Well. Charles might not be able to speak, but he is certainly not obligated to stand and simply listen to this, either. So he steps forward, holding out Erik’s note toward Emma, biting down on the inside of his cheek as hard as he can to keep from saying something out loud. With this many people on the bridge, his head is throbbing already from the effort of keeping his telepathy constrained, as it is.

Emma plucks the note from his hand daintily, as if she suspects his touch has contaminated it somehow. He watches as she reads, pale eyes skimming back and forth across the page. He wonders if she still thinks he’s an android, or if drawing his blood already disproved that. If they can see synthetic molecules in android blood and distinguish them from organic ones. If there is anyone he’d tell the truth about what he really is, she would be last on that list. Even if she did believe him - which she probably wouldn’t - he doesn’t like to imagine what she might do with that information. 

Emma is still reading but Charles feels increasingly tense, standing there waiting for her to say something. He turns his gaze back around to the bridge just to look away from her. Almost everyone’s here, excepting Raven, who is probably down in the engine rooms where she ought to be. And Hank. Maybe even now, Hank is bent over a slide of Charles’s blood, counting cells, trying to assign him a species. 

A broad fiberglass table in the center of the room bears up semi-transparent holograms of planets and star systems and what look to be navigation records. Azazel is spinning a silvery replica of Sihwa like a top, the pad of his forefinger barely even touching the simulation. Stars keep their records in memory, not in matter. Before becoming a ship person himself, these physical methods of keeping track of things had seemed so primitive to him. Now they just seem … practical. Natural, even. Human minds are full of far too much else to keep track of the entire universe’s records by memory alone. Their brains are bursting with their own curiosities and passions - all these magnificent twists and turns Charles used to rave about but the other stars found bizarre and narrow-minded. 

Emma has finished reading Erik’s note, now; she folds it back along crisp lines and tucks it away in her jacket pocket. “A messenger boy who can’t talk,” she says, reaching for a pad of paper and pencil herself. “Erik’s fancies grow more ridiculous by the day.”

Charles can’t help wondering what Erik would say, if he knew Emma had taken over his spot in the Commander’s chair. Whatever orders were on the paper Erik sent him to pass to Emma, she has not given them. 

Emma finishes writing - her response is only a few sentences long - and gives Charles the paper. He turns to go, and indeed he is almost out the door when she speaks again:

“Oh, and Charles, sugar ….”

He glances back over his shoulder, lifting his brows, waiting for her to continue.

She never does. She just smiles and waves him away, so away he goes.

\--

Even though Moira sees fit to keep him limited to the bed for the remainder of the day, Erik seems back to his usual self within the hour. Any crewperson who dares stop by the infirmary finds themselves subject to Erik’s terse and often demanding orders. Charles is not exempt, himself; he loses track of the number of notes he carries back and forth between Erik and Emma, who cannot be off the bridge in Erik’s absence. 

Erik is finally set free around dinner time. For once, Charles is glad he can’t speak, because he isn’t sure he has the will to keep himself from offering to walk Erik back to his quarters. And while such an offer might have seemed innocent enough to Charles even one week ago, now he is starting to learn better. Or maybe it would be innocent, except for the fact that it wouldn’t be. 

Whatever embarrassment Charles had initially felt when he touched himself has been swept away underneath the overwhelming sense of pleasure that comes along with it. If he’s meant to feel guilty for wanting Erik, then he is failing spectacularly. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with whatever this is, whatever he is feeling for Erik - except let it overpower him in those moments when he feels most desperate, reaching his hand down into his pajama bottoms and letting himself live in a different world for just a little while, until his hand is slick with goo and reality comes crashing down around him all over again.

Charles knows Erik must be exhausted, so he doesn’t go to the library after dinner the way he would on any other night. Instead he stays in the common room with the other crewmembers, watching them play a card game and listening to Scott telling Alex about some mining expedition he was on once, a deep sleep op that took three years after launch to reach the quarry. 

Charles’s head is starting to throb again. He puts it down on his table and closes his eyes, trying to measure his breaths. That’s helped in the past. Slow, steady inhale and exhale, try not to think too much about his own pulse. He knows the others think he’s just fallen asleep from the way they avoid his chair and speak more softly when they’re nearby. But Charles doesn’t dare open his eyes. The light, he’s certain, will be enough to push him over the edge, and vomiting - as he learned three weeks ago when Scott ate too much beef jerky - makes sound.

He tries to let his awareness of the others in the room drift away, but it’s almost impossible. Every word they speak reverberates inside his skull and makes him feel hot beneath his skin, feverish, like they’ve lit a fire he can’t put out.

He tries not to think of all the stars exiled before him, the ones put into human forms who died all too quickly, their minds withering away, rotting from the inside out. Gone within days.

He wants to think he’s different. 

But he’s not quite that naive.

\--

“I told you I wasn’t an invalid,” Erik says the next night, when Charles shows up in the library. 

Charles frowns, confused. Erik is standing by the hearth, his jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbows, firelight casting a golden glow onto his skin. He looks healthy and hale as ever, and Charles finds it difficult to merge the Commander he sees before him with the same man he saw lying unconscious on that hospital bed, hooked up to far more tubes and wires than Charles could count. 

“You didn’t come to our lesson last night,” Erik continues, and the pieces fall neatly into place.

Charles grabs a pen from the desk and scratches out a slow, short sentence: _I thought you are sick._ He carries the note over to Erik and shows it to him, watching as Erik gently plucks the paper from his fingers and glances down at Charles’s muddled characters. 

“I _was_ sick,” Erik responds a moment later. “And then I was better, which you might have noticed, as they let me out of the infirmary. But never mind that. You’re here now, at least.”

Charles follows his cue to head back toward the desk, though he doesn’t miss the way Erik slips the note he’d written, uncreased, into his back trouser pocket.

They settle into their usual habits: Charles in the chair, writing out sentences and now paragraphs, telling simple stories with his words while Erik points out whatever errors he makes and corrects them, one hand curled around the back of Charles’s seat, and when Charles leans back too far he can feel the backs of Erik’s knuckles brushing his shoulder - a tiny touch, a quiet reminder that Erik is near, and of all the things Charles holds secret within his own mind, scenes in dark corners and kisses stolen on the catwalk in full view of the stars.

When they’re done, an hour or two later, Charles expects them to retreat to the armchairs by the fireplace as they usually do, to listen to Erik tell his stories and drink from the bottles of wine Erik has stored in a hidden cupboard behind the bookcase. But tonight - tonight, Erik stays where he is, a few taut inches from where Charles sits, silent for a while before he says: 

“Charles.” 

And only when Charles glances back at him, brows raised, does Erik go on. 

“Do you want to see the stars?”

\--

The suit Scott helps him into is heavy and makes his limbs feel stiff and unwieldy, encased in layers of foil and plastic and cloth that Erik tells him will protect him from the vacuum of space. If he remembers the way they found Charles in the first place, lying naked on the barren fields of Thanet, he is pretending to forget. 

Alex suits Erik up alongside Charles, guiding arms and legs into their casings, strapping on black boots and gloves that wrap halfway up their forearms. The last to go on are the helmets, clear bulbous things that make Charles feel even more restricted than before. He lifts one heavy arm to touch a finger to the glass, several inches past his nose.

“To help you breathe,” Erik explains as Alex screws his own helmet on tight. “There are several pressurized oxygen canisters in the body of the suit. They’ll be pumping a steady flow of gas into your helmet. It’s perfectly safe.”

It doesn’t feel safe. It feels small and enclosed, and Charles’s head is starting to hurt once more -- he isn’t used to being held in such tight spaces. He is used to having the universe constantly expanding around him, an infinite spread of dark matter in all directions, the fabric of time and space vibrating to the rhythm of a music only the stars can hear.

His telepathy is restricted enough, and his life energy caught up in a form far too small for it. He doesn’t like the thought of being locked in further. 

But Erik asked him if he wanted to see the stars, and Charles had said yes. He isn’t backing out now.

Scott hooks a tether onto his belt and says, “This is the only thing holding you onto the ship. Without it, you’re lost in space. So don’t touch, got it?”

Charles nods. He and Erik enter into the airlock and the door slides shut behind them. For a moment there is nothing but the near-silence of Charles’s own shallow breathing -

\- and then the second pair of doors open and they are stepping out into the vast violet sea of space and Charles stops breathing altogether.

All around them, the stars glitter like a handful of dust thrown against dark cloth, far too many to count - and far away, the red and green and blue glow of planets spinning in their orbits. Charles has never seen space like this, outside the halo of his own light. He feels infinitesimally small, like the tiniest creature in the entire universe, astounded by his own insignificance in a way that makes him feel very powerful indeed.

The ship doors have closed behind them. When he looks round he sees Erik grinning at him inside his helmet, wide enough that Charles swears he can see every single one of his teeth. Erik says something but Charles hears no words; there is no sound connection between their helmets. Whatever Erik was trying to say is lost to the fathoms of space, but Charles thinks he gets the gist. It _is_ incredible.

Charles drops back, falling slow, weightless out here, watching the galaxies rise up above him like a slow tide. It’s the headiest feeling in the world, watching it all drop away, losing himself somewhere both foreign and familiar, his heart pounding in his ears.

He lets himself turn in a full circle before he’s upright again - Erik’s upright, at any rate - and he can feel heat in his cheeks, the same heat that bubbles up in his chest and threatens to burst out of him at any second. It’s like Erik knew. Knows. As if he had reached himself into Charles’s mind and plucked out the one thing that could somehow make everything feel good again, if only for a moment.

Erik lifts an arm and it takes Charles a second to realize he’s pointing at something off to his left, away from the ship. Charles looks. At first he isn’t sure what it is Erik meant to show him beyond the sheer majesty of space, but then it happens: a flash of light exploding in the distance, then vanishing. Then another, and another - silver-blue and brilliant, lights streaking across an area of the sky that is strangely starless. A large black void in the landscape. They must be, Charles realizes with a start, on the outer edges of a large solar system, and that black space is in fact a planet, too far from its sun for them to make out its contours. Which makes these lights that glitter then vanish across its surface meteors, crashing into its atmosphere and quickly burning up. ‘Falling stars,’ the ship people liked to call them. Charles remembers. They’d see one, and then they’d make a wish.

He doesn’t have to think very hard, to know what he wishes for.

Erik’s closer now, close enough that Charles can see the color of his eyes. And he isn’t sure what makes him do it, what impulse possesses him to open his mouth and speak into the silence of space, his voice echoing off the curved wall of his helmet, words that will never be heard out loud:

“I love you.”

Something in Erik’s expression falters for a moment - but then Charles’s attention is tugged away by the way the tether at his belt suddenly jerks him back toward the ship. Erik is drawn back as well, both of them being far too quickly wound in toward the opening airlock doors. 

Charles stumbles slightly when his feet hit the floor and he turns quickly, watching as space is shut off from him, the stars and the planet and the falling meteors all vanishing behind steel plates. He and Erik barely have their helmets off - Charles can see the whites of Erik’s eyes around his irises, and he wonders if Erik knows what is going on before they’re even told, because he knows that look, he’s seen it before, through the gazes of a thousand ship people - and the second pair of doors slide open.

Executive Officer Emma Frost is standing on the other side.

“We need you on the bridge,” she says - and for once, her gaze is on Erik alone; it never touches Charles, not even for an instant. “A Federation ship just came up on our radar.”

Charles watches the way the back of Erik’s neck goes stiff, the levity gone from his eyes, the man who had grinned so broadly at him among the stars replaced by the cold figure of their Commander, his lips a hard line.

“And?” Erik says.

“They’ve just hailed us.”

\--


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, so sorry for the delay! Life happened. :/ This chapter is a bit shorter than the ones preceding it, because I wanted to get an update out asap, so it's about half of the original would-be chapter 12. 
> 
> Thanks a zillion to **Tahariel** for betaing this chapter even though she wasn't feeling well this weekend.  <3 She's kind of the best, did you know?
> 
> Also - check out the amazeballs fanart **katenish** did for this story! It can be found [right here](http://katenish.tumblr.com/post/47159555252/i-felt-so-inspired-by-this-scene-in-the-starry-sky). She captured what is my favorite scene in the story so far, and it was just lovely. :)
> 
> And now: enjoy the story! I will stop rambling. XDD

Emma’s words hang in the air between them for a second, taut as the magnetic pull between two bodies, and it takes Charles a moment to realize that the thudding sound clamoring in his ears is his heart. He hadn’t put it together until just now, the threads finally weaving into place: this ship might be military class, and it might be staffed by a crew who all wear the uniforms of the Federation navy - but that doesn’t mean it holds Federation allegiance. A true Federation ship would be swarming with crew of all stations and stripes, not left half-empty and run by a tight-knit group of officers who don’t seem to trust anyone who isn’t a mutant.

They’re not Federation, but they’re not civilians, either. Erik’s uniform, his posture, his crisp training - it’s unmistakable. Deserters? But why…? 

Charles’ stream of thought is cut off when Erik’s hand closes around his upper arm. 

“Let’s go,” he says.

“You can’t mean to bring _him_!” Emma widens her stance as if to block their path, her gaze jumping to Charles at last. “Erik - we can’t trust him. He’s not one of us!”

“He’s coming,” Erik states flatly. “I’m not leaving him down here.”

“Send him to the dorms, if you must, but - ”

“He stays with me!” Erik snaps. “And as I recall, I am wearing the Command uniform, not you, _XO_ Frost. Now stand _down._ ”

Emma’s hand is on the hilt of her gun, ready to draw. Charles can hear Erik breathing heavily beside him, quick little inhales and exhales, and he knows Erik hasn’t used his power against Frost, not yet - she could still pull her weapon from its holster if she wanted. But he’s equally certain the bullet would never leave its chamber. 

Slowly, with tension thrumming in the hall, vibrating between their bodies like plucked strings, Emma’s hand falls back to her side. 

“Fine,” she says. Her voice is as thin and cracked as ice. “I know what you think you see, Erik, but you don’t know anything about him. To you he’s nothing but a pretty mute. But _I_ see. You’re naive. He’s blinded you, and it’s going to get us all killed.”

Erik just watches her, silently, and Charles has to fight to keep his telepathy drawn in tight, grimacing against the razor wires as they carve their way through the rotting flesh of his mind. The pain is like a sickness, like an infected wound that’s been left unchecked.

“Now is not the time,” Erik says at last, still holding tight to Charles’s arm. Charles wishes he would hold just a little bit tighter - he wants the bruises tomorrow, to remind himself that Erik ever touched him at all. “Charles comes with me. We don’t have the luxury of standing around in corridors debating the point when the Feds are already on our tail.”

Emma’s face is tight, but she turns on her heel and leads the way back down the hall, to the elevator and the gleaming steel and fiberglass stage that is the ship’s bridge. It’s unnaturally silent when they enter. Everyone is here, including Raven, Hank, and Moira, whose jobs usually require them to be elsewhere on the ship. 

Azazel is the first to speak. “What do you want us to do?” he asks. “We cannot sit here and wait like prey. They will swallow us whole.”

Charles shifts uncomfortably, and realizes suddenly that they’re still in their spacesuits, that they never bothered taking them off after their spacewalk. That moment, alone with Erik among the stars … it seems like years ago, now. He pulls down the zip at the front of his suit and pushes it off his body as quickly as possible. 

Erik, noticing, belatedly does the same, tossing the suit off to the side. In his military uniform, he strides to the Commander’s chair and sits, both feet planted flat on the floor with his hands grasping the armrests, looking out at the stars spread out far as the eyes can see. No meteor shower, no falling stars. Where they are, it’s nothing but vast and empty space.

Charles tries to glimpse what they’re all looking at, to spot a Federation ship approaching in their field of view, but there’s nothing. 

“Are they still hailing us?” Erik asks at last, glancing at Azazel.

Azazel nods. “I muted it. Sound was annoying … ah, annoying some of crew.” Charles doesn’t think anyone misses the way Azazel glances, sidelong, toward the XO.

“Well then _unmute_ it, if you please.” Erik’s gaze doesn’t so much as flicker in Emma’s direction.

Azazel pushes one of the dozens of buttons that dot the leftmost panel and suddenly the bridge is blaring with noise. An ear-splitting alarm sounds, a siren that spirals round and round and round and never ends, that drills itself in through Charles’s skull and tears at the cage he’s build around his telepathy, threatening to pierce through the very heart of him and spill him out in bloody chunks across the floor.

He mustn’t scream.

Charles doesn’t realize he has his hands pressed against his ears, his entire face scrunched up tight and his breaths coming hard and fast and heavy - until the sound stops and the silence is ringing in the air, the alarm still echoing across the space between now and then. He opens his eyes cautiously. Even Erik, he sees, is grimacing and rubbing his temple with two fingers.

“Perhaps I should have asked you to turn down the volume first,” Erik says.

Charles’s stomach roils. The screech of the alarm had rattled him down to the bones; he can feel his spirit shaking in his marrow, twisting up through his spine and coiling hot and tight at the base of his neck.

He presses the palm of his hand over his mouth. Only Emma Frost sees him, and she is watching him with the slightest curl to her lips, a smile so quick and tiny that it is gone before he can decide if he’s imagined it.

A man’s voice comes out over the speakers.

“ _IGF Arkham_ ,” the voice says. “This is the _IGF Lovecraft_ , requesting parlay with your commanding officer.”

Erik meets Emma’s gaze for a brief second, before saying: “I’m Commander Erik Lehnsherr. Who is this?”

“Major Commander Robert Kelly. We request you anchor your ship and prepare for boarding. This is a routine inspection.”

Erik lifts a hand and Azazel presses another button. Silence, at first. Then Erik flips the switch back to mute and swivels round to face his crew.

“Raven, get back down to the engine rooms. Alex, I need you on artillery. And Darwin … you know what to do.”

“So we’re running, Cap’n?”

Erik doesn’t answer the question. He just looks at Darwin until Darwin lifts his hand in a salute and turns to the navigation controls, reaching toward the hyperdrive. “They’re going to see us getting ready to go into warp speed, you know,” Darwin says. “They aren’t going to just let us fly off into space without giving chase.”

“If they chase us, then we shoot them down.”

Darwin hesitates only a second longer - Charles can see the whites of his eyes, irises like dark islands - and he isn’t blind, he sees the way Darwin’s fingers just-barely tremble when he touches the control screen.

“Grab onto something,” Erik says, almost as an aside - and Charles only just has time to grasp the handle on the nearest wall before the entire ship is lurching forward, space torquing around them into a blaze of darkness and light.

He bites the inside of his wrist to keep from making a sound. Charles can’t be sure if he’s going to scream or if he’s going to laugh, but it’s just - it feels like falling, a hundred thousand miles per second, the ship - the crew - all of them hurtling through space faster than the speed of sound, and Charles can’t steady himself even long enough to take in a breath of air.

“Are they following us?” Azazel asks.

“Readings are all over the charts,” Erik says. He’s staring at silvery-blue markings on a screen overhead, frowning. “Won’t know until we’re out of warp speed.”

“But if we can’t track them, they can’t track us so easily, either,” Emma says.

“We’ll see.” Erik doesn’t seem convinced. 

Who are they running from, really? And why? Charles looks at the screen on the ceiling, the one Erik can’t keep his eyes off of, but none of it means anything to him. It’s all writing he can’t read, not in the Common Tongue, along with flashing lights that dart across the gridded field of view, spiraling and appearing and vanishing and reappearing.

A military man, on a military ship ... yet they’re fleeing from the military. Why take Charles in at all? Whatever it is Erik and his crew are tangled up in, surely having Charles around only complicates things. No wonder Emma is so suspicious. No wonder she wants him off their ship. At best, when they are caught, Charles may be seen as their accomplice. At worst, he’s a witness.

The worst thing Charles can think is that Erik and his crew must be raiders, or pirates, but there is no evidence to support that. They’ve boarded no empty vessels, attacked no passerby. There is no cache of stolen booty on board - and Charles would know; he’s wandered through almost every room. 

They’re just a handful of mutants, strung together by what appears to be nothing more than a fierce loyalty to each other and to their captain. 

As it always does, Charles’s gaze swings back to Erik. Tension has drawn Erik’s lips thin and taut, a muscle twitching in his cheek. His posture is cool as ever, but his right hand betrays him, the third finger tap-tapping on the armrest of his chair. The anxiety is far more visible in the others’ eyes, in the way their gazes flit from panel to panel, typing in code, staring through the navigation window. Only Emma is calm, standing in the middle of the bridge with her arms folded across her chest, shifting only to tuck a single stray lock of hair back in perfect place.

The impossible forward momentum of the ship is making Charles nauseous. He closes his eyes and curls his fingers around the cool metal of a handlebar, soothes himself by imagining Erik’s power swelling in the steel beneath his hand, Erik touching him even from afar, Erik wanting to feel the warmth of Charles’s palm as much as Charles wants to feel his. It calms enough that he can open his eyes again and look back out the front window, even if his stomach still roils at the view.

“We have to take the ship out of warp,” Darwin says, his fingers flickering between the controls on the touch screen before him. “We’re burning fuel fast. And battery’s already as low as 15%. We won’t have enough to take us to Sihwa if we keep this up.”

“If even one Federation ship is after us, what makes you think the ports of every galactic harbor from here to the Mendelssohn spheres aren’t on the lookout?” Emma looks at Erik, though his gaze is still fixed on the event horizon. “They know, Erik. We shoot that ship down, we’ll be signing our own death warrants.”

“What is your point?” Azazel interrupts, turning from his controls to face Emma, pointed tail still doing the work of his hands behind his back. “When Lehnsherr recruited us, we knew what it meant. And we do not forget it now.”

“Do you think getting ourselves arrested in Sihwa is going to further the mission? We should find a fuel planet somewhere isolated. Lay low until the fleet thinks we’ve left the quadrant, and then reassess.”

“No.” Erik finally pulls his gaze away from the window to meet Emma’s. His tone is as flat as Charles has ever heard it. “We’re not going to delay this.”

“And what about him?” Emma tilts her head in Charles’s direction. “We’re stopping on Sihwa because of _him._ That’s a two, three hour delay in itself, given traffic.”

“We need fuel. And power, as has been noted.” A breath. “And I am not abandoning Charles on some barren rock. Nor am I taking him down with us.” 

Erik isn’t looking at Charles, but Charles feels the steel under his hand go hot all the same - a brief, singeing upswing in temperature. He’s not the only one who feels it; across the bridge, Alex yanks his hand away from the metal wall he is leaning against and gasps as if he’s been burned. 

“Sihwa is on our direct trajectory,” Erik continues. “Emma, consider your concerns duly noted. If anyone asks, I’ll be sure to tell them you voiced your objections loud and clear. Darwin - take us out of warp. Slowly. Alex, have artillery ready to be deployed the second we’re in stable space. Clear?”

“Yes, sir!”

Charles can feel his pulse pounding throughout his entire body as Darwin touches two fingers to his screen and slowly drags a lever downward. The ship slows, and Charles swears he can feel the pressure building in the cabin somehow - or maybe that’s just in his head, just the way all his blood is rushing upward - 

The rush of stars outside the window suddenly stops - and then they are simply floating there, as if suspended in time, every second drawn out taut as a wire. For a moment Charles allows himself to believe that they are alone, that the Federation ship has been lost somewhere in warp, still speeding through spacetime far out into the ether. But then:

The other ship bursts into their space, huge, gleaming steel, and there is no mistaking the purpose of the small hatches now sliding open along its hull - or the blinking red lights revealed within. 

Erik presses the heel of his hand against a green button. “Alex! Tell me we’re ready to launch.”

“Ready, sir,” Alex’s voice crackles through the overhead. “Awaiting your orders.”

Erik nods, although there’s no way for Alex to see it, and leans forward in the Commander’s chair, arms resting on his thighs and his fingers steepled together. Waiting.

They’re all expecting it, but somehow it still rattles Charles to the bones, the space-shattering moment that the darkness around them explodes into light - the Federation ship, opening fire.

\--


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as ever to **Tahariel** for the insane amount of time and effort she puts into not only betaing this work, but listening to me ramble out loud trying to work out plot points, whine about writer's block, and always being a listening ear even when it's 5 in the morning her time. You're stellar. (Pun intended.)
> 
>  **Etirabys** did some incredible fanart for Chapter 11 (the space walking scene!) that you can find [here](http://etirabys.tumblr.com/post/56140624019/fanart-for-spicedpianos-the-starry-sky-and-the). 
> 
> Also don't miss the very talented **bourbonss** ' fanart [here](http://bourbonss.tumblr.com/post/58675564022/me-me-thats-me-im-a-star-dont-you). 
> 
> Both pieces are absolutely stunning, and you should definitely check them out, as well as the artists' other work. :P

It is as if time both dilates and contracts at once. Slows and quickens. Charles swears he can feel each pulse of his heart, blood slogging through his veins, long and drawn-out in heavy, solemn thuds. And yet he cannot even begin to count the missiles that blaze toward them, blinding bright lights against the expanse of space. Closing in.

They should return fire. Why aren’t they returning fire? Charles’ entire body is jolting, ready to flee, but there’s silence on the intercom. Nobody else is reacting, nothing from Alex, no orders from Erik or Emma, just the horrible silence of their deaths rushing toward them. Charles covers his face with his hands, but can’t help but watch through his fingers, and brace himself - 

But then - somehow, impossibly, the missiles freeze, suspended in space. Caught there, as if they’d reached the end of a tether. Charles can see them slowly turning in place, drifting like asteroids in distant orbit. Something surges up inside him: awe, or astonishment, or both. Thrown off balance, he instinctively reaches out and grabs the nearest safety pole, gripping it as if for dear life.

His gaze snaps over to Erik, who is standing with his legs spread and one hand flung out toward the Federation ship, his fingers splayed and shaking - somehow he’s holding the missiles in place. Charles swallows, hard. He had no idea Erik’s power was so extensive - the mere implications of what Erik is doing, his ability to track hundreds of pieces of metal in empty space and hold them there - it’s more than moving objects with his mind, it’s _electromagnetism_ , it’s power over the fabric of space and time itself, it’s what builds universes and destroys them, it’s ….

Erik curves his fingers, just slightly, and at first Charles doesn’t see the implications, he doesn’t understand why Erik’s brows have suddenly knit together, his mouth a hard thin line, why Emma is standing a little bit straighter. 

Then he sees it. Out there. Dozens, hundreds, of missiles, switching direction to point back toward the Federation ship.

His sweaty hand slips on the metal safety pole, which has abruptly gone to ice.

Erik flicks his wrist, and the missiles surge forward once more; their target has changed, and there’s nothing to do but stand there and watch, useless, helpless, when the missiles collide with the other ship. 

The explosion is brilliant, infinite, a dazzling display of spark and fast-burning hydrogen and starlight fuel. The rest of the crew has to cover their eyes but Charles can do nothing but stare wet-eyed straight into the heart of the sun, his heart in his throat, watching the destruction of thousands of lives on board that ship, a blinding blaze against the darkness of space, white-hot and searing into his vision, the image of it branding itself permanently into his bones.

A thousand lives, winked out in an instant, and he felt not one of them go. As if they never even existed. Here, then not-here. Present, and then gone. Like paper dolls torn up and tossed aside, a thousand loves and memories and hopes and desires and fears, scorched to ash and shrapnel, floating silent in the void. And Erik, standing there with his hand still outstretched as if it were nothing. As if those lives were naught more to him than an abstract concept. Easily-dismissed.

Charles shakes, drained inside, numb and stretched-out thin over his own skeleton, incapable of moving or speaking or thinking, even had he wanted to. Sparks fall through the sky and then vanish into blackness. The bridge is silent.

Erik lowers his arm, and Charles wonders how he didn’t notice before - the metal cage of the bridge is shaking. Expressionless Erik turns on his heel, his spine stiff, posture all but military, and strides out of the room, the bridge door opening for his approach and sliding cleanly shut behind him.

Something snaps inside him and Charles’s body seems to wake up. Although he stumbles over his own feet, he darts after Erik, grabbing at the crack between the bridge door and the wall as if he could force it open with brute strength alone. When it finally gives way, he practically trips into the hall. At first, he thinks the hall is empty, finds himself wondering how Erik managed to disappear in a matter of seconds -

But that’s when he sees him. Erik is sitting on the floor just to the left of the door, his knees bent and his arms stretched out past them. He’s hunched forward in a strange, distorted-looking posture and staring at his hands, fingers splayed wide and trembling, the glassy-eyed look on his face that Charles has come to associate with sickness and anesthesia.

Charles bites back the reflexive desire to ask if Erik is all right. He thinks he knows the answer, regardless.

Even so, it’s a moment before his legs finally give and he folds down to sit next to Erik, close enough that the fabric of their sleeves brush; Erik does not spare him a second glance, and Charles wonders if Erik has noticed him at all, if he even realizes Charles is there. He just keeps staring at his hands.

The floor is shaking beneath them. Charles only hesitates a fraction of a second before he reaches out and touches the inside of Erik’s forearm - Erik starts, but he doesn’t pull away. So Charles dares to press a little more firmly, fingers curling round Erik’s wrist and squeezing. 

“I - “ Erik’s voice is hoarse, broken. 

The ship shudders beneath them, tipping violently. Charles loses his balance and falls against Erik’s shoulder, grasping at him with both hands now, his heart leaping up into his throat. The ship rights itself and Charles forces himself to slowly release his death grip on Erik’s arm.

Erik’s skin has gone several shades paler, his eyes the color of smoke. Charles strokes the palm of his hand with two fingers, since his notebook is forgotten in his room. Not that he knows what he could say, anyway. Not that Erik seems capable of focusing on words; his gaze keeps flicking around the room, narrow and wary, as if he expects something to jump out at them at any moment. His fingers tremble beneath Charles’s touch.

“They’re coming,” Erik says.

 _They’re gone,_ Charles wants to tell him. _You blew them up. They’re gone and they’re never coming back._

“They’re coming ….”

Charles has never seen Erik like this before, like someone has scooped out the inside of him and left him a thin, rattling husk. But he thinks he knows what this is, all the same. Last time it happened, Erik refused to leave the bridge. Moira had injected him with a sedative and keep him locked in the infirmary for days ….

Someone’s going to come looking for him. And Charles will be damned if Erik is a crumpled heap on the hall floor when they do. 

So he wraps an arm around Erik’s shoulders and pushes himself up, trying to pull Erik along with him. Erik wavers as he rises, and he stumbles when Charles tries to get him to walk down the catwalk; Charles grabs onto the metal railing for balance, but the steel grows cold beneath his touch, cold enough to hurt, sharp spiking pain shooting up his wrist and make him let go, stifling a gasp.

He doesn’t know how he manages to get Erik all the way to his suite. Opening the door is a battle - trying to keep Erik lucid long enough to punch in the codes to let them off the elevator, and then at the keypad by his suite door. Charles has to take hold of Erik’s head by the hair and force him to look into the retinal scanner. Erik just keeps twitching, muttering something incomprehensible and grasping at Charles as if he’s the only thing keeping him afloat.

The last time Charles was in here, he was waiting for Erik to interrogate him. This time he ignores the books and Erik’s swept-steel desk, guiding Erik across the study toward the two doors on the opposite wall, the ones Charles had presumed led to a bathroom and bedroom. Charles pauses, not sure how to proceed, but Erik just staggers forward toward the right hand door and closes his hand around the knob. Charles can’t tell what he does, but it must involve his power, because he hears the sound of a latch clicking before the door swings inward.

He doesn’t bother looking for a light switch. He just focuses on leading Erik toward the narrow bed that is pushed up against the far wall, beneath the window. Erik’s legs seem to give out the moment the backs of his thighs touch the mattress and he all but falls back onto the bed, looking as dazed and lost in his own room as he had in the hallway outside the bridge.

Charles cannot speak, so he cannot say any of the things he wishes he could say. That it’s going to be all right. That wherever Erik’s mind has taken him, that is not where they are. That as long as Charles is here, he won’t let anyone harm them.

He has to settle for what he _can_ do. He pushes himself up onto the bed next to Erik, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. Erik is bent forward, his elbows on his knees and his head ducked down, and Charles carefully, gingerly, touches the tips of his fingers to the bare skin at the nape of Erik’s neck. Erik goes still the moment he does; even his breaths seem to come more shallowly. Only after Charles is certain that Erik isn’t going to push him away does he begin stroking along the back of Erik’s neck, tracing over the lumps of vertebrae that push up beneath the warm skin, his fingertips catching at the collar of Erik’s shirt. He lets his hand continue downward, smoothing down the firm slope of Erik’s back, feeling the quiver of tiny muscles beneath his palm that betray just how much effort it takes Erik to stay so very, very still.

Now that he is off the bridge, away from the lights and sounds and the feverish daze of too-much-at-once, he cannot stop reality from creeping in. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees it: Erik’s arm thrown out toward the vastness of space, those missiles speeding through the air under a power not their own, the ghastly red-gold light of the explosion.

It’s not that Charles had been unaware of the violence humans could inflict upon one another. But he had never witnessed it. Not ten, not a hundred, nor a thousand empty ships or mind-less corpses could have prepared him for the reality of war. To how easy it seemed for Erik to take the lives of all those men, to snuff them out as if they were nothing at all to him. Just comets to burn up on entry. If Charles had realized in time, could he have stopped him? … _Should_ he have? Those men would have killed Erik and Charles and Raven and all the rest of them if given a chance. But Erik killed them first. He could have let those missiles drop into space, send them floating off to orbit some distant star. Could have, but didn’t. 

Just thinking about it makes Charles feel cold inside. Erik didn’t understand, he tells himself. Humans aren’t like stars. Erik wasn’t there with them when they died. He didn’t feel the way they felt when their existences guttered out. He never saw the flash of white that precedes blackness. He could not feel their minds. To him they were not people. Not mothers and fathers, sons and daughters and husbands and wives. They were a threat to the people Erik loved, nothing more.

Is that an excuse? Can that really be all there is to say on the matter? 

But as much as Charles can imagine what the people on that Federation ship felt in their final moments, Erik is here _now_ : trembling beneath Charles’s touch, dragging long fingers back through his hair over and over and over again.

Erik watched his entire family, his entire _planet_ , all the mutants in the Eastern galaxy, die like this. At the hands of Federation men. Moira told him that Erik couldn’t stop reliving it. That’s what happened, up there on the bridge. The Federation opened fire and all Erik could see was the past rushing toward him all over again. So he did what he knew how to do. He defended his people.

Charles just has to believe that if he’d had the stars’ gift, if he could see into the hearts and minds of the people he had killed, Erik would never have done what he did. But Charles was not the only one on that bridge with telepathic ability.

He closes his eyes and tries to bring himself back there. This time, he notices not Erik, but Emma. She watches the Federation ship explode without reaction - she is the lone calm figure amongst chaos, her neck held straight and her chin aloft, the fire a mere reflection in the irises of her eyes.

She could feel the minds of the men in that ship. She knew their names. To her, they were more than paper dolls. And she knew what Erik had been through, that her Commander’s decisions may not be completely objective. Yet she let him act anyway, and watched in silence as she felt all those thousands of lives vanish.

Charles’s stomach clenches and he forces himself to open his eyes again. Erik has stopped shaking, though he is still hunched over with his face hidden from view, the heels of his hands pressed to his brow.

Charles slips off the bed and drops down to his knees on the floor, sitting in front of Erik, where Erik cannot help but see him. He places both hands on Erik’s thighs, then slides them slowly upward, enraptured by the way the firm muscle feels beneath his palms. He feels dizzy - just touching Erik makes his heart beat faster. 

Erik glances up and their eyes meet. Charles’s breath catches in the back of his throat but before he can pull his hands away Erik closes his fingers around Charles’s wrist, keeping him where he is. All Charles can hear is the sound of his own pulse thudding in his ears. All he can see is the curve of Erik’s lips, soft and perfect. 

“Charles….” Erik’s mouth moves around the syllables of Charles’s name. Charles is utterly lost to it - he’s the one who is shaking, now, as Erik’s fingers skim up along his arm, touching him like he is something precious and fragile.

Charles wets his lips and Erik’s gaze darts down to watch, breath coming a bit shallower, faster. They are so close, now. Charles wants to slide his hand up beneath the fabric of Erik’s shirt and press it flat against the plane of his stomach - and he would, if he could bring himself to move his hand from Erik’s thigh. 

Erik touches the side of Charles’s face almost hesitantly; Charles leans into him, eyes fluttering shut as Erik slides his fingers back into Charles’s hair, curling round the back of Charles’s neck and drawing him in -

Erik goes still. “Someone’s coming.” 

Charles’s mind is still reeling as he scrambles to his feet and Erik rises up beside him, tugging at the hem of his shirt as if to straighten out imaginary wrinkles, and Charles only just has time to worry how this might look, to wonder if they are still standing too close, before the knob of Erik’s bedroom door turns.

Emma Frost steps across the threshold, her cold gaze scanning the both of them, lingering a little too long on Charles - long enough that Charles’s cheeks flush red despite himself, and in that moment, he’s certain Emma does not need telepathy to read Charles’s mind.

“Erik,” she says, when at last her attention has slid from Charles to her Commander. “We have a situation.”

“What is it?” Erik’s face is utterly, coldly impassive, and his tone is steady, nothing at all like the way he’d said Charles’s name only seconds before.

For a moment, Charles thinks Emma isn’t going to answer. She simply looks at Erik, her lips pressed together in a grim sort of smile, in a strange and twisted pleasure. Her eyes are like chips of ice. And then she raises one flawlessly-manicured hand and, her gaze not wavering from Erik, points directly at Charles.

“Him.”

\--


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to **Subtilior** for beta-ing this chapter! Also to **Tahariel** for her long-term emotional, beta, and plotty support, and **Etirabys** for helping me figure out what the fuck I was even writing (at several points this chapter). :P You guys rock!

“Him,” Erik echoes, voice flat in that way Charles has come to associate with Erik’s duties as Commander; so different from the way he speaks when it is him and Charles alone, when Erik is teaching Charles how to write the character for ‘perfection.’ “As ever, Emma, your brevity is not the virtue you think it is. Please. Elaborate.”

Emma gestures and Charles finds his gaze briefly diverted by the glimmer of something sapphire on her wrist before it slips beneath the sleeve of her uniform. A second later Hank McCoy shuffles into the room, his line of sight tipped away from everyone, flitting from shoe to shoe, and then down to the piece of paper he is practically twisting between his hands. Charles’s gut feels heavy, and he doesn’t have to guess why to know that’s a bad sign. 

Almost unbidden, a lesson with Erik drifts up from memory, linking this feeling to the sight and sound of the word ‘intuition.’ _People say not to put too much stock in intuition,_ Erik had said, leaning over Charles’s shoulder with his hand pressed against the desk, watching Charles write, their thumbs barely brushing. _But I find it to be an invaluable resource, when used with caution and tempered by the reasonable mind._

“Commander,” Hank says, folding the paper in his hand and pressing his fingers hard down the crease, only to unfold it all over again. “Sorry to … to disturb you … like this …. It’s just, I’ve got some, uh, interesting results, and the XO told me to tell her soon as I knew, and so I did, even though what I know -- even though I’m not sure what I know, or how I think I know what I know, or if it even means anything at all, but I told her anyway and she brought me straight here -- ”

“Spit it out, McCoy,” Emma says, eyes rolling upward. “Tell the Commander what you found.”

Hank’s cheeks flush an even deeper shade of scarlet. “It’s probably artifact,” he hedges. “I ran the test seven times, but we’ve been in hyperdrive so long, who even knows the impact of that kind of speed at a molecular level -- but … I mean, I had control samples, from you and XO Frost and all the rest of the crew, and they were all fine, so … so maybe this sample was contaminated, or maybe there’s some kind of technical error specific to this … specific sample, or --”

“I’m having flashbacks to Command School logic class,” Emma says, examining her nails for nonexistent flaws. “Something about a man named Occam, and his razor.”

It’s nonsense to Charles, of course, but somehow whatever Emma said seems to have steadied Hank somewhat. He swallows, and then nods. When he speaks again, his voice is steadier. “The results, then,” Hank says. “My own … rather unparsimonious interpretations aside.” He straightens out a folded-over corner of the page in his hand, glancing down at whatever it says one last time. 

Erik has been standing next to Charles throughout all this, his posture never shifting, hands clasped patiently behind his back and -- Charles can’t help but notice -- his gaze fixed exclusively upon Emma Frost. Something in that tiny note of recognition makes Charles want to throw up every single one of his mental defenses, walling himself off behind an insurmountable barricade of wards, twisting himself down to his core, ignoring the copper-tasting pain just so long as he can be certain of his own harmlessness. His own … uselessness. (The only way Charles has to be useful, to anyone, at all, is as bringer of death, judge jury and executioner of every living being aboard this ship. Charles would rather disappear entirely.)

“XO Frost had me run the usual range of blood tests on Charles,” Hank says. “CBC, arterial gases, chemistry, heavy metals. You know.” 

Erik nods, once.

“All of them were … weird. Levels completely incompatible with human life. But, you know, that wasn’t _too_ strange, since it’s not like Charles is a regular human anyway. I mean, if you can survive on Thanet, you’ve _got_ to be a mutant, right? Question was, what breed? So XO Frost had me do a genomic sequencing as well.”

“And? He has the X gene, I presume.”

“No. Yes. Well. I don’t know. That’s the thing. His DNA was … messed up. A lot.”

“What do you mean, _messed up?_ ” There’s a new edge to Erik’s voice that wasn’t there before. Something almost like a hiss … and if Charles were Hank, he thinks he’d be looking a whole lot more anxious than Hank is managing. Or maybe Hank hasn’t noticed. 

“As in, he had it? But that’s about all I can say. There was some actual deoxyribonucleic acid present, but it didn’t seem to be organized into chromosomes, at least not how you would usually think. Some of his cells would have five chromosomes, some would have fifteen, and none of them contained any genes that we could recognize. X or otherwise.”

Emma takes a step forward, putting herself bodily between Erik and Hank. “Thank you, Dr. McCoy. Please return to the outer office and wait there. Close the door behind you.”

Hank obeys quickly enough -- and Charles wants to tell them both, Emma and Hank, that Erik wouldn’t hurt anybody, not in cold blood, and certainly not over this … DNA, whatever _that_ was, whether Charles’s was messed up or not. He had never struck Charles as the sort to get angry with someone just for saying something he didn’t want to hear, no matter how true that thing might be. Or … his mind lights onto an alternative, moments later. Maybe Emma wasn’t worried about Erik attacking Hank. The whole ship’s made of metal; if Erik wanted Hank dead, he would be, whether he was here with them or in Erik’s study. She just wanted to get Erik and Charles alone. The more immediately, the better. And in the time it took Charles to figure that out, she’s succeeded.

“What game are you playing, Emma?” Erik says, the second the door has closed behind Hank McCoy. “What’s your motive? What are you trying to prove?”

Charles doesn’t miss the faint click of lock into latch, Erik’s power at work.

“No game,” Emma says, shaking her head slowly. “Just … the pursuit of truth.”

“That is all very well,” Erik says, “but surely your scientific curiosities can be assuaged _after_ we’ve completed our mission. This -- ” he gestures broadly, at nothing in particular, “ -- feels more and more like a distraction from our immediate goal.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Emma cuts in, stepping forward. “Justice? Revenge? You’ll achieve neither if you don’t know exactly what kind of creature you’ve brought on board this ship.”

Erik laughs and turns his shoulder to her, walking away from the both of them toward the starboard wall, leaning against it and crossing his arms over his chest. “‘Creature?’ Really, Emma. Hank brings in some odd lab results and already we’re right back where we were. Was it so long ago that the humans used words like that, against _us?_ ”

“He’s not _one_ of us!” Emma snaps out, so violently that Charles himself jumps, shrinking back from the both of them, some basal part of himself already desperately looking for some -- any -- escape. “He’s not a mutant. He’s not even a sympathizer. You have no _idea_ what it is you’ve done, what you’ve brought onto this ship -- “

Erik pushes off the wall, and Charles must have blinked, because somehow he is right there, standing a scant fraction of an inch from Emma, his lips drawn out into a thin line, without seeming to have moved at all. “So tell me.”

Something seems to waver in Emma, at that, the line of her throat shifting as she swallows. “I don’t know,” she says. 

Erik smiles, but the expression is lopsided and brittle. “You’re lying,” he says. “I can feel you,” he taps his temple, “up here. Trying to make me perceive you as … _believable._ And maybe, if you were the only one who taught me how to build these wards, you might have actually succeeded.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you what he is.”

“But you do _know_ it.”

“No. I don’t know. But I suspect.” Emma seems smaller, somehow, even though neither of them has moved. 

Erik glances at Charles over Emma’s shoulder, but Charles can’t read anything in his eyes. They’re veiled too perfectly, and without using his ability as a star, he has no hope of reading them. He could try reading Emma, to see what she thinks she knows, but he’d have to weigh the value of having that information against the consequence of Emma’s death -- and he can’t help thinking that if Emma suddenly died, Erik would immediately suspect him. And kill him. Charles’s stomach turns.

Erik makes a noise deep in his throat, something wordless that sends a shiver down Charles’s spine. “But you are certain he’s a threat.”

Emma nods. “I am.”

“A threat -- and yet you can’t tell me what you suspect, why you suspect it, or even what will come of it. Charles has been aboard this ship for months, Emma; surely if he had plans to destroy us all, he would have done it already. The Federation attack of just a few moments ago was a perfect opportunity -- why not then? And just now, he was left alone with me. He could easily have taken advantage. But he did not.”

Emma speaks through gritted teeth. “Of course you would see it that way, _sir._ You’ve been so devoted to your revenge that sometimes you forget, that some of us are playing a longer game --”

“A long game that somehow ends with you on board this ship?” Erik lifts a brow. “Pardon me, XO Frost, but I fail to see any outcome, long or short, in which you benefit from being here.”

Charles thought he had been following along fairly well up until now -- but in this moment he realizes they’ve been discussing whatever-this-is at a level far above his own. The fact that they allow him to listen in at all is probably because they know that, no matter what they say, he isn’t going to understand it. And, unable to speak, isn’t likely to go telling. That they’re discussing him as if he is not present doesn’t irk him; millenia of exposure to solar politics and telepathy have made him somewhat indifferent to such minor slights.

“Need-to-know basis, Commander. We agreed when you took me on that there would be certain aspects of both our … goals … that the other party did not necessarily need to know. But this? This threatens both of us. This threatens _everything._ ”

“You’ll forgive me, XO, if I don’t make my Command decisions based on your gut feelings.”

“ _I can’t read him!_ ”

Erik had only just started to turn away when Emma all but yells it out -- and he freezes there, not looking back at her but not quite looking at Charles, either. Charles’s pulse pounds wildly in his chest, and he’s caught on the tense wire between the rational knowledge that Erik won’t kill him and the intuitive certainty that any second now, that racing heart inside his chest is going to stop beating.

“I can’t read him, Erik,” Emma says, her breath coming heavy, her voice shaking in a way that Charles detects only because he’s looking for it. “It’s like there’s a blank space in the world, wherever he is. A … a _wound_ in the fabric of space and time. Nothing but utter absence. Like peering into a black hole.”

Erik turns back to her, slowly, his expression wary. Charles’s skin feels as if it’s been drawn too taut across his body, like it could snap in an instant. Is it possible that Emma knows? That she really, truly knows what he is? If she knows, then Charles should be doing everything in his power to make her _tell_ Erik, the same way Charles has been trying to tell him for so long. But if she knows, then why is she so convinced that Charles is here to hurt Erik or anyone else on board this ship? Charles knows Emma wants him dead, that she doesn’t trust anyone she can’t read. Maybe, if she knows he is a star, then she knows how stars communicate -- telepathically -- and Charles’s inability to do this makes her suspicious of what he may be hiding. In which case Charles _shouldn’t_ let her tell Erik, because he has no way of explaining the curse the Eldest cast upon him when he was exiled. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain that he’s a star in the first place, never mind the rest of it. 

Charles considers running at Emma, grabbing onto her and shaking her until she understands. It’s an urge he recognizes as futile, but that doesn’t make it any more compelling.

If any of this is showing on Charles’s face, neither Erik nor Emma is giving any sign of noticing it.

“I’ve only seen this once before,” Emma says. “And it … didn’t end well.”

“‘This?’” Erik echoes. “Meaning what?”

“ _Erik._ ”

They both fall silent for a moment and for one reeling second Charles wonders if Emma is communicating telepathically, if somehow he could pick up on threads of the conversation without having to actually _use_ his power -- but just as quickly, Erik takes a step away from her, his arms dropping back down to his sides. “XO Frost,” he says. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Please return to deck and man the ship in my absence.”

“Erik -- “

“That’s an order, Emma.”

She goes, but not without shooting a glare in Charles’s direction first. Erik unlocks the door for her with a wave of his hand, and it locks again in her absence. 

Charles opens his mouth even though he knows damn well he cannot speak out loud - and so he shuts it again a moment later, silent and anxious and feeling entirely ineffective. And even though he feels he ought to have been prepared for it, he’s not, when Erik spins about on the heel of his shoe and slams his fist into the wall.

 _”Fuck!_ ” Erik yells out a fraction of a second later, breaking his cold facade even if only for a moment, hunched forward over his hand, eyes squeezed shut. Erik had forced the steel wall to flinch away at the last second -- Charles can see the concavity, even from here -- but he wasn’t quick enough to regret his own impulse; the damage was already done. Blood spatters the floor and Charles lurches toward Erik without thinking, not for one second wondering if he might be next, if it’s his body Erik wanted to be slamming his knuckles into. 

“I’m fine,” Erik bites out hoarsely, jerking bodily away from Charles, blocking him from seeing his hand with one forearm held up like a shield. “It doesn’t hurt.”

The lie hangs between them for one strained second, flaunting itself in both their faces just long enough to start to sting. 

“What are you?” Erik says, still keeping his fist hidden, his body curving away from Charles like a parenthesis even though it’s clear he’s trying to stand upright, to look every bit the Commander that he’s supposed to be. “Tell me. Why can’t Emma read you?”

Charles chews the inside of his cheek and shakes his head, holding up two fingers.

“Fine,” Erik bites out. “One at a time then. Why can’t Emma read you? Write it down if you must.”

Charles goes to the small nightstand by Erik’s bed, where Erik’s left out a small notepad. There’s a pen in the drawer. He leans over, using the nightstand as a writing surface. The characters are more difficult than usual, with his fingers trembling like this. It takes Charles two tries, two crumpled up sheets of paper in the waste basket, before he’s able to bring Erik something legible.

“ _I can keep her out_ ,” Erik reads aloud. “What?” he says. “Like a shield?”

Not the best way of describing Charles’s wards and wire fences, but he doesn’t know the characters for any of those, so he just nods instead. 

“Emma is a Class IV telepath,” Erik tells him, no small amount of incredulity lacing his tone. “You can’t be older than twenty. Twenty-three at the _absolute_ most. I have a natural anti-psionic gift, and even so, it took me until I was twenty-seven to build the kind of shields that would so much as trip Emma up.”

Charles isn’t sure what kind of response Erik expects to that, so he just shrugs and wishes, for the second time, for the ability to read whatever it is that is flitting around in the shadows of Erik’s eyes. It makes him nervous.

“Are you a mutant?” Erik asks.

Last time they asked this, Charles had said yes. This time …. He shrugs, again.

“Are you human, then?”

A definite no.

“Then we’re back to step one.” Erik thrusts the notebook back into Charles’s hands. “What are you?”

Charles flips the used page over to the back side and presses the tip of his pen to the paper, hesitating long enough that by the time he starts to write at last, the ink has leaked through to the following three pages. _I cannot explain it. But I don’t want to hurt anyone._

He passes that back to Erik and tries to keep his hands from shaking. Maybe now, he could write ‘I am a star’ and be believed, but something in him shies from the idea, after all this time. Maybe it is Emma’s reaction. Maybe Erik’s still-bleeding knuckles. Quite possibly it was what happened up on deck, when Erik so ruthlessly killed all those men on the Federation ship. But if there ever is or was a right time to tell Erik the truth about what he is, this isn’t it.

Erik stares at the notebook for a very long time. Charles watches his eyes move, reading and rereading Charles’s words. He waits for Erik to react. To yell at him, or to ask another question, or force the metal in his ship to trap Charles down against the floor while Erik sends for Emma again.

“Hurting us,” Erik says, echoing Charles’s written words. “I can think of very few non-human species capable of hurting the mutated human.” He passes the notepad back to Charles. “If you can elaborate without offending your own sensibilities, then please, do so.”

Charles gets the distinct sense that he is being asked to vouch for himself, somehow. That Emma has given her testimony, and now Charles must defend himself, or else the matter of the Charles Problem will be left to Emma’s discretion. 

He writes quickly. 

_I am not human but I still have a power. I can’t use it. If I did, it would kill everyone._

Erik doesn’t spend nearly so long deliberating over this note as he did the last. He just folds it up and slips it into his pocket. 

“I understand,” he says. His voice is softer than it was, in more ways than one: it’s quieter, but gentler, too. Charles wonders for one reeling moment if maybe Erik really _does_ understand. Too easily, his memory presents the recollection of Erik, trapped in his own mind, reliving the genocide of his people, the metal of the ship around them beginning to liquefy as Erik’s power slips from under his control. Charles realized long ago how deadly Erik’s power could be, if misused. Only now is Erik coming to that same realization about Charles. They are both trapped by their own, different curses. Erik by his memories and Charles by his treason. 

Charles dares to step forward, too cognizant of the moment in which he trespasses into Erik’s space, crossing that arbitrary line humans draw around themselves. As far as he knows, Charles is the only one on this ship that Erik’s ever let inside that circle. For Charles himself, he hadn’t realized the circle even existed until recently. 

Erik’s breath catches in the back of his throat, audibly, when Charles slips his fingers up the inside of Erik’s wrist, curling round his arm and drawing himself near, looking down at the blood that spackles Erik’s knuckles, the bruises beginning to bloom like dark matter beneath his skin. Charles can hear nothing but his own heartbeat. Can feel nothing but the flutter of Erik’s own pulse against his fingertips, and the coppery tang of Erik’s blood when he brushes his lips against Erik’s battered hand. 

Erik is standing stock-still, as unmoving as if he were carved himself of metal, except for the sharp shallow up-down of his chest as he breathes. Charles kisses each knuckle, taking his time, wanting to memorize the way Erik’s skin feels beneath his mouth. Delicate, to keep from hurting him. If he cannot speak, then let this say everything. _I love you I love you please trust me don’t leave me._ Erik’s hand twitches in his, fingers flinching toward Charles’s palm before Erik is able to wrangle himself back under control. He still hasn’t shifted, not an inch, by the time Charles lifts his head and meets Erik’s gaze. Erik’s mouth is hanging open slightly, Erik staring at him as if he’s never seen Charles before in his life.

It’s several seconds before Erik tugs his hand out of Charles’s grasp and steps away, placing Charles definitively outside his circle once more.

Charles goes, quickly and silently with his pulse pounding in his throat, before Erik has the chance to speak and ruin everything.

\--


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, many thanks to **Tahariel** for betaing this in a matter of hours! You're awesome.
> 
> Also, thank you to everyone still reading. I love writing this story; knowing there are people out there who love reading it kind of makes my day. <3

Charles doesn’t fall asleep that night.

Instead he lies awake in bed, staring up at Logan’s cot above him, trapped in the same cyclical pattern of thought as he has been all afternoon. He keeps replaying the attack of the Federation ship in his mind, switching his focus from Erik to Emma and back again, trying to discern whether there was anything, any twitch of muscle or turn of posture, any clue at all that could somehow unravel what has become a veritable tangle of mysteries. But no matter how many strings he pulls in his own memory, nothing tugs loose.

He knows why Erik did what he did. Or he thinks he does, anyway. If Erik had left that ship untouched, it would have chased them until they ran out of fuel. Or perhaps it would simply have relayed back to the rest of the Federation that Erik and his crew were out here, doing whatever it is they’re doing, and Erik’s plan (his vengeance? Emma’s words echo in his mind) would be ruined.

But Charles has spent a star’s lifetime in the minds of humans just like those on board that ship. Husbands and wives and children and lovers and friends, every mind a bright light shining. Threads of lives criss-crossing across the universe, some touching, others not. Some tangling into unintelligible knots. Maybe Charles’s life is just another one of those threads, now, to the stars looking down from above and below and around. A thread sprouting from nothing, rootless, only to wrap itself too quickly around the strands of Erik and his crew. 

And Erik, cutting short so many lives that dare to cross his path.

Viewed from afar, Charles can imagine how one might see men like Erik and write his actions off as barbaric murder. Human violence, inherent to the species. But Charles … Charles has stood by Erik’s side or placed his hands on his skin and seen the devastation in his past. The nightmares he has drawn up around himself like a cloak to shield himself from anything that might deter him from his path. Maybe Charles can afford to think of the men on that Federation ship as individual life-threads, but Erik cannot. Or he is afraid to.

That night Charles finds himself outside the room where he and Erik meet for their writing lessons; this time, uninvited. It’s not surprising -- the path is so well-trod by now that it has started to make appearances in his dreams. The library door is closed, but and there is no telltale pool of amber light leaking out from beneath the door to suggest Erik is still awake and working. 

It’s only after he’s opened the door that he realizes he’d expected it to be locked. No: not merely locked. _Welded shut_ , the latch melted by Erik’s power. After all, whatever else it is he does in here besides teaching Charles to read and write the Common Tongue, it is something he feels the need to do in isolation. That Erik wouldn’t bother locking the door almost surprises Charles more than anything else that has happened today. Does this mean that Erik does not expect Charles to return here if not for their lessons? That Erik expects him to find the room useless, below his current level of literacy? Or -- a soft part of him whispers, a voice he wants to believe too much to allow himself to trust it -- maybe Erik _hoped_ he would return, to find Erik sitting in the armchair by the fire, to slip into his lap and straddle his thighs, pressing their bodies together in a communication that does not require words --

Charles feels his cheeks growing hot, even though there is no one else around to see. No. No, he doubts that is the reason.

Charles crosses the room in the dark and flicks on the lamp at the main table. The book they’d been reading from last lesson is still open, Erik’s pen lodged between the pages to mark where they left off. Charles takes care to memorize the way the desk looks now; if Erik left the door unlocked, then surely he has some other way of knowing when someone is in here. Or perhaps that’s Charles’s own paranoia tickling at the nape of his neck, forcing him to glance over his shoulder every few seconds, half-expecting to find Erik looming behind him, furious at Charles’s intrusion. 

It doesn’t matter what Erik thinks, Charles has to tell himself bluntly. If Erik didn’t want him here, he should have locked the door. And if Erik is planning something dangerous, something for which he would willingly slaughter an entire shipful of human beings, then Charles wants to know about it, preferably before it’s too late, it’s happening, and there is nothing Charles can do to stop it. (Or to support it, reminds another part of himself, the part that refuses to take sides before he has all the evidence.)

Charles glances over the room one final time, checking for any subtle traps meant to detect intrusion, before he begins. 

He looks for the blueprints first, the ones he remembers from his first night in this room. He finds them coiled up inside plastic tubes, tilted against one of the bookshelves on the far wall. He has to shake to get them to drop out of the tubes and onto the floor, and even then he finds he has to pin the corners down with books to keep them from curling up again. But at last he is surrounded by reams and reams of designs, Erik’s own handwriting scribbled along most of them, still mostly-illegible to Charles. He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting -- that, perhaps, his vocabulary would be sufficiently advanced for him to understand the technical jargon labeling the blueprints, and he’d figure out why the ship’s layout was so strangely important to Erik. He knows Alex (or was it Darwin?) had told him this was a research mission, but the longer he’s on board ship, the less he believes that is true. If the absence of crew and the military grade structure of the _Arkham_ weren’t enough, the astonishing amount of weaponry they were packing on this ship for such an innocuous mission would have given them away. Most ships carry some artillery, to fend off pirates and the like, but nothing like the weapons these artillery suites are meant to hold. 

Charles sits back on his haunches and frowns down at the blueprints. Well, even if he can’t read what’s written on them, just having the time to actually _peruse_ their contents is better than nothing. He’s quickly able to parse out which layers of the design refer to the parts of the ship in current use, and which are not. The abandoned residences, for example, and an unused dining hall. 

His gaze is drawn to it automatically, this time: the strange, tank-like structure in one of the lower levels that he’d noticed on his first night. It looks like nothing that belongs on any ship, military or otherwise. It’s oblong in shape, vaguely cylindrical, although one end is more flattened and the other, more conical. Its shape reminds him vaguely of the pawns on Erik’s chessboard, although he’s pretty sure there is no association. Charles frowns, smoothing both hands over the blueprint, as if that would bring greater information to light. Erik has made no personal notations, here. Whatever this is, Erik felt no need to revise it or to make any other references.

Charles forces himself to move on, with some reluctance. Unfortunately, the rest of the blueprints are mostly unintelligible to him, with the exception of obvious structures meant to indicate the bridge, and the fuel cells, and the engine room. Erik did tell him, Charles recalls now, that he’d made some renovations of his own to the design of the ship. Perhaps that explains why Charles can’t quite suss out anything that directly indicates, say, a research mission for the ship. Or the technology has advanced since the last wreck Charles explored. Or, of course, it’s the simplest truth of all: that whatever Erik told the Federation, and whatever he told Charles, this ship’s purpose is and always has been a military one.

After a few more minutes, mostly spent trying to memorize the blueprints so he wouldn’t have to come back and take them out again later on, Charles nudges aside the books he’d been using as paperweights and rolls the designs up again, fitting them into their tube cases and leaning them back against the bookshelf, just as he found them.

He pushes himself up off the floor and turns his gaze to the bookshelves that line the walls, skimming titles (those he can read, anyway). He’s not sure any of these will be helpful. They’re all reference manuals or novels. Nothing likely to give Charles any specific information about _this_ ship, and _this_ mission.

He drops into the chair at the desk, his body feeling suddenly heavier than usual. How useless. He isn’t sure why he came here at all. Anything important is likely to be in Erik’s personal office, secured by all necessary measures. Charles supposes he’d just hoped that, with the small crew and clearly targeted mission (whatever it is), perhaps Erik hadn’t felt the need for such secrecy.

Charles pages through the papers and notebooks scattered across the desk. Mostly they’re left over from his earlier lessons, though there are a few that look like memos which Charles takes the time to skim. He’s just about to give it up as a lost cause when his fingers catch on something hard in the final stack and a chill spirals up his spine. He pulls out a small black tablet, sleek and dark in that way that Charles has come to associate with Erik. 

The part of him that has spent the past several weeks amongst humans balks momentarily at the thought of invading privacy, but the part of Charles that is a star overrides it almost effortlessly. He presses the only visible button and the screen lights up. It’s password-protected, of course, but all that time exploring the recesses of human minds wasn’t for naught. Charles knows just the right combination of numbers to type in to enter via the manufacturer’s backdoor. (Really, he thinks to himself as the screen goes briefly dark before flickering, and letting him in. Even if a company _is_ the monopoly on electronic systems, must they have a universal hackkey? The same string of numbers that got Charles onto this tablet could get him onto the bridge mainframe, if he was so inclined. Though not everyone is a telepath, of course, with near-perfect memory. And brute-forcing the key would take a human the better half of a millenium.)

The tablet boots to the most recently-opened program. A video program Charles has seen a thousand times before, but this time the sight of it immediately sets his heart to racing. Erik (of course he did, of _course_ ) kept a Captain’s log. 

Whatever is going on, whatever the mystery, it is all sure to be recorded here in exquisite, Fed-regulation detail. And -- Charles’s breath catches in his chest -- the log was updated as recently as this afternoon.

Charles scrolls back in the history and finds the very first log ever recorded. Approximately one year ago, if Charles is remembering the date right. Coordinates place the location far from here, close to the planet which hosts Federation headquarters.

He maximizes the screen and hits play.

Charles may have watched a thousand Captain's logs over the years, but there's something altogether more interesting about them when it's someone he knows sitting in front of the camera. Erik is wearing his Command uniform, but the jacket is unbuttoned at the neck, the only visible sign that Erik considers this one of his less formal duties. 

"17th of Jian, 4732," Erik says. "Commander Erik Lehnsherr, _IGF Arkham._ Present time, 1100 hours; twelve hours past launch. Departure from orbit was uneventful …." 

Charles watches in vague fascination as Erik continues on, listing all the minutiae that he is required to address in these logs. Charles notices Erik's gaze is never quite focused on the camera lens; like most, he's distracted by the reflected image of himself on the monitor, pupils fixed down and to the right rather than straight ahead. The same fractured gaze Charles has seen on most Captain's logs. It's surprising, the way something so typical can seem unexpected, when it involves Erik.

“ … patrol mission in the E-6 quadrant of the Western galaxies,” Erik’s recording says, and Charles’s pulse stumbles in his throat. “Anticipated duration is twenty-four months, with potential extension if called to active duty. Including myself, the crew is numbered at 125, with an officer class of 15%.”

One hundred and twenty five. One hundred and twenty five -- that was how many people had been on board this ship when it departed base, and on a _military_ mission, not a research one. Charles is gripping the tablet tight, knuckles slowly losing their color. He’s never been lied to before. Stars are never lied to. It’s not possible. And yet here he is, without his power, being played for a fool all the same.

All this just begs the question, of course, as to where the rest of the crew went. Suddenly, the empty corridors feel ominous, not just isolated. Something happened. A sickness took them. An unexpected attack. Or whatever game it is that Erik and Emma had been discussing that afternoon, they are played at the exclusion of Erik’s original crew. Charles doesn’t like to think about the implications of that. He blinks and sees the Federation ship against his closed eyelids, torn to pieces by Erik’s artillery. Eyes open again and the memory fades. He doesn’t want to know what Erik does to people who get in the way of his … Emma had called it _vengeance._

Charles flips through Erik’s log file, trying to see if he can locate the moment when everything changed. Erik updated every day, or nearly every day; that made it difficult. Charles watched a few seconds of each, and gauged by the light in the hall outside whether or not this wing of the ship had yet been abandoned. 

And there it was. One day the light was on, the next it was off and Erik was saying, “Crew has been successfully reduced. We are now running with essential personnel only, and expect to reach our target in six months’ time.”

_Our target._

Not just a patrol mission, either, apparently. But why ditch the crew? Surely the more men the better, if one was planning any kind of military action…. 

The use of the word ‘reduce’ doesn’t make Charles feel much better. Erik doesn’t say _discharge_. He doesn’t even say _abandon,_ come to that, although Charles assumes that must be what happened -- perhaps because he cannot tolerate the idea of all those people being dragged out of bed and thrown before a firing squad (another memory surges sickly upward: a man against a wall, his body convulsing and crumpling as too many bullets tear through flesh) or poisoned (a woman, gagging over her meal, and Charles remembers the confused terror of her last moments) or -- Charles presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, tangling his fingers in his hair and pulling so hard it hurts. But it doesn’t hurt worse than the heat inside him, his telepathy writhing against Charles’s restraints, his desire to prove to himself that he’s overreacting battling his abject refusal to feel anyone on this crew die at his own hand.

Charles realizes, almost distantly, as if his body does not belong to him, that he is trembling. Erik wouldn’t do that, he has to tell himself. Not in cold blood. What happened with the Federation ship was horrible, but Charles is the only one who could have truly appreciated that. (Except Emma. Emma and her cold smile as hundreds died.) Charles simply cannot square an Erik who would kill his entire crew for the crime of extraneousness, with the Erik who is so trapped by his own memories and fear that he cannot control his own power, thin and shaking beneath Charles’s arm in the wake of battle.

Charles can’t help himself; he glances up, at the time stamp on the video. The log was posted five months ago. Whatever the mission is, whatever they’re doing, they’re almost done with it. No wonder Emma is eager to have Charles off her ship. If this is all off-books (and it must be, with the crew … dumped, and the Feds chasing them), then Charles is a walking liability. Thankfully, however, a silent one. Although, with the rate his writing is improving, Charles suspects he may prove more of a threat to the crew’s goals than they’d expected. And they will be anticipating that. 

So … so why bother teaching him to write at all? Charles can’t wrap his mind around it. If Erik is doing something illegal, and it’s imminent, why give Charles the tools he needs to tell someone about it? Particularly since they’re bringing him to Sihwa soon, where he will probably be able to find a Federation agent in almost any open bar. (The memory that fuels this knowledge isn’t his; it belongs to some Fed whose life and mind Charles read long ago, a man that, Charles realizes with a strange pang, must have been dead for years by now.) 

Well, it’s likely that Erik hadn’t expected Charles to ever figure this much out, to begin with. And Charles very nearly didn’t. If it hadn’t been for the Federation attack, and the conversation after they heard the results of Emma’s blood test, he would never have been this invested. 

Charles scrolls back in the files again, to the beginning. This time, he doesn’t skip parts. He listens to all that he can, trying to glean whatever evidence is left. Hard to pay attention, though, when his stomach is twisting and turning and each breath hurts to take in. He has no word for what he’s feeling. The emotion is hot and pained and explosive, clawing beneath his skin and making his mind feel blurred and constricted, as if he is suffocating just from the intensity of it all. 

He learns the following, from the early video logs:

Emma was always Erik’s XO, but some of the crew, like Raven, were not given officer titles until after the expulsion of their fellows.

Erik is a fairly recent graduate of Command School. Before the military, he spent many years working for something called the Shaw Corporation, in engineering. Primarily astro engineering, which explains how he could claim to have made improvements on this ship. He never mentions why he decided to change his career so suddenly.

Almost everyone who was culled from the initial crew was human, not mutant. Erik takes care to mention specifically the powers they lost in the reduction. He almost sounds regretful.

Alex, who Charles barely ever sees, is mentioned more often than any other crew member in Erik’s log. Erik spends a great deal of time discussing a case of the flu Alex caught ten months ago, and it’s the first time that the professionalism of his logs is broken -- that Charles detects human emotion in Erik’s eyes. Alex is important. To Erik, although Charles rarely sees them spending time together, or to the mission. Perhaps both. 

Logan apparently used to cause discord, when there was a full crew. He’d get in fights and Erik had to remain the impartial arbiter, though Charles thought it was clear from the way he discussed it that Erik privately supported Logan’s interest in almost every case.

Erik is Jewish, one of those old-Earth religions that most people have discarded over the years. Charles’s memory supplies the knowledge that links such a bizarrely traditionalist idea like religion with the Erik he knows: apparently Jewish-ness was always seen as something as much like a race or culture as it was a creed. It’s one of the only religions that anyone still practices at all. It comes up just once in the log, at some point after the crew was reduced. Erik was acknowledging something from his religion called the High Holidays, telling the camera that the introspection demanded by these days only emboldened his decision to go through with his mission. He looked grim, gray-skinned and haunted, but even still he did not disclose details about what the mission even was. He just said: “If this is a sin in God’s eyes, then let it so be enscribed. I will not repent it.” 

The words chilled Charles to the bone and he turns the tablet over before he can even think twice about it. A second later, he remembers to actually press the button to power it down, forcing Erik’s recorded voice into silence. He sits in the chair for several minutes afterward, not trusting his legs to bear his weight should he try and stand. His mind rails against the restraints he has imposed upon it, beating itself bloody against imaginary barbed wire. Not once, not in the entire time he’s been aboard this ship, has he so very much wanted to let it explode outward, dragging thoughts and memories up from every mind he touches and forcing them before his own justice. The only thing that keeps him restrained is his awareness of the fact that the very ignorance he wants to assuage in himself is the reason why he cannot simply _take_ the answers he needs. In the end, he has very little information, still. All this anger stems from what he _fears_ might be going on. Not what he _knows._ It’s born of the terror of misunderstanding. Before, when he defended humans to the council, he knew how men justified their deeds to themselves. He knew how love felt in the human soul. He knew the complicated tangle of anger and hope and betrayal as well as if it were his own. But he cannot understand what is going on aboard this ship, because he cannot use his power. Trying to fix that situation would put him in the position of both judge and executioner. Innocent or guilty, everyone would still be dead.

Suddenly, the world tilts on its axis and Charles lurches forth from his chair. He grabs a bottle of the wine he and Erik had been drinking the other night and pulls out the cork, pressing his lips to the opening just in time for the contents of his stomach to come roaring up his throat and out his mouth. He tastes something metallic, head swimming -- and he’s grateful that he’s not in the dorms, because the sounds he’s making as he chokes and gags are loud enough to wake and kill anyone nearby. For the most part, he gets it all in the bottle. Which surprises him; the violence of it is enough that when he’s finished his entire body feels weak and wrung-out, and he finds himself wondering about the limits of mortal endurance. He is a star in human form, destined to die -- and sooner, rather than later. He isn’t sure where to draw the lines between human weakness and the weakness of near-death. 

He corks the bottle and puts it back in the fridge. He doesn’t know what else to do with it. He can’t take it with him, but he couldn’t have simply vomited on the floor and betrayed his presence here, either. He’ll just have to make sure no one tries to drink it.

Charles drags his fingers back through his hair twice, three times. His heart doesn’t feel like it is beating normally in his chest. The terror that this might be it, that this is the end, that he’s pushed his human body as far as it will go, hangs over his shoulders like a heavy coat. His thoughts feel too flayed-apart and disjointed for him to try to talk himself through the probabilities. He spent all his self-control trying to keep his mind _in_. If he dies, maybe that is easiest, anyway. He’s lost his family, his people. He is in constant danger of killing the man he cares about more than anything in the world, and an errant thought would be all it would take. He is trapped in the middle of a war he hadn’t known even existed. He can save Emma the trouble of planning his murder, even, if his life falls away tonight the moment his eyes close.

He makes it back to the dormitories, if just barely. His bed is cold, but Charles has never been so grateful to crawl between its sheets and let himself slip off, carried up into the air by the rumble of Logan’s snores and the arrhythmic stutter of his own, faltering pulse.

\--


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the lovely **Tahariel** for her beta-ing efforts!

The next day, Charles notices he is being followed.

Never by the same person -- they seem to be working in shifts -- but nevertheless, he finds he is never left alone. Raven walks with him from the engine room to the dining room, where Darwin takes over, keeping Charles engaged in conversation until Moira shows up with a transparent excuse for a physical exam. Hank walks him back to the dorm, where Logan demands to teach him a card game. Dinner time it’s Alex, who doesn’t say much, but sits there the entire time Charles is trying to force his food down his throat, a frown turning down the corners of his lips.

He doesn’t care. Not really, anyway -- or at least not in the way he suspects he ought: the way others would, in his position. He doesn’t know whether the crew is acting on Erik’s orders or on Emma’s. It probably doesn’t matter to the crew, anyway, who gave the demand; they see Erik and Emma as one unit, or at least, they see Emma as an extension of Erik’s Command. If they see no reason for her to have her own agenda, they’ll hardly invent one.

Does it even matter, Charles thought to himself as he stabs at his dinner, from whom the order came? Emma and Erik both have reasons to have him watched, and the crew will have been given bland, sanitized excuses either way. The only person to whom it makes the slightest difference is Charles, and this is exactly why he cannot ask any of the crew.

By this point, he is fairly certain Emma wants him dead, and it would be hard to arrange a convenient accident if he was always in the presence of another crewmember. Erik, then. Concerned for his welfare or -- more likely -- wanting to ensure he knew where Charles was at all times, should Erik’s suspicions of him grow even darker. Although -- Erik must have some security system in place for tracking people on his ship. Heat signatures. No: heartbeat detection, which allows more significant variability from person to person and could serve a secondary purpose of alerting Erik if anyone experienced a medical crisis (or worse).

Perhaps Erik has even realized, himself, that Emma may try to kill Charles. Or maybe it’s simply a product of what Charles told him, about his power having the potential to kill everyone, though then again, if that were the case, Charles would expect Erik to have him isolated from the crew, not trailed by them. Could Erik know that Charles was in the library last night? That Charles saw his logs? It depends on whether Erik was awake or not, and if he was, whether he was paying attention to his tracking system. But if he knew, wouldn’t he confront Charles about it himself? Forbid him from returning? Try to … explain? 

Charles is so caught in his own tangled thoughts that he doesn’t even notice Erik come in until he’s already speaking.

“Do any of you care to explain to me why I found a wine bottle full of _vomit_ in my library this morning?” 

Charles’s head jerks up, but Erik isn’t even looking at him; he’s staring at Darwin and Alex and Logan, as if certain the blame must rest with one of them. Charles is grateful; his cheeks must be scarlet by now. 

“As impressed as I am that you managed to get it all inside the bottle while, presumably, intoxicated beyond all reason, I would still like an explanation,” Erik says, when it becomes clear that no one is going to take responsibility.

Charles glances at the others, who are all looking at each other with suspicion. Well. Not each other. For the most part, they’re all looking at _Logan._

“Hey now,” Logan says. “It wasn’t me.”

“A likely story,” Alex mutters, shoving another forkful of pasta into his mouth.

Erik says nothing for a moment, just holds Logan in his gaze, the corners of his mouth tugged downward. Charles tries not to think about the way Erik looked in his video logs. _...crew has been successfully reduced…._ He doesn’t quite manage to hold at bay the shiver that runs down his spine.

“I don’t like it,” Erik says at last, slowly, and Charles imagines him tasting every word in his mouth: the crisp t’s and the crackling k’s, “when I don’t know what is going on in my ship. After so long, one would think my own crew would know better than to lie to my very face.”

It’s a bluff, of course, but Charles is the only one who has any way of knowing that for certain. Erik has no proof it was one of the crew sitting at this table, or else he’d be paying a whole lot more attention to Charles than he seems to be. He will probably keep giving this same routine to varying sets of crewmembers, Charles realizes, until someone confesses. (Or, in this case: until _no one_ confesses, because Charles’s lips are tight shut and his pen and paper are still stuffed securely in his bag, kicked under the table, unreached-for.) But Erik is truly unsettled by this. That part’s _not_ a bluff. Even if it should be a minor thing, a brief scolding to pass around the staff until Erik’s satisfied that the silent culprit has had his or her deserved upbraiding, it’s not. Erik is genuinely disturbed that someone was in the library so late. No doubt he’s wondering if the crime even occurred last night, or whether the evidence has been there for a while now, waiting for him to notice. 

At last, Erik’s gaze flickers over to Charles, a small frown tugging at the corners of Erik’s mouth just for a moment, but it doesn’t linger. Apparently Charles is not the type to vomit into a wine bottle. Never mind if Charles personally thinks he ought to be the most obvious candidate.

No one says anything, and no one seems to be willing to look Erik in the eye after that. Even Logan just glares in the vague direction of his glass, spearing a rasher of bacon with the prongs of his fork. 

Charles watches Erik go, not blind to the stiff tension drawn between his shoulders as he leaves the dining hall. Is it even this, that’s bothering Erik so much? Or maybe he was already on edge, after what Emma told him last night. 

“Don’t worry too much about him,” Darwin says, sliding down one chair to sit next to Charles, nudging him with one shoulder. “Erik has his moods. But we’ll be landing in Sihwa tomorrow, either way. You won’t have to put up with him for much longer. Can’t say the same for the rest of our sorry souls.”

Charles knows how Darwin means it, but that doesn’t stop the heavy weight in his stomach from sinking further down toward his bowels. Whatever Erik is up to, Charles now has less than twenty-four hours to figure it out. And then … what? Exile on Sihwa. An exile he expects will be every bit as painful as that from his solar family, if only because … well. It doesn’t take much effort for Charles to remember the precise nature of his attachment to this ship and its particular crew.

Sihwa, which will inevitably mean his death: of this much he is certain, now. The headaches are constant, and it has become more and more of an effort, keeping his telepathy locked away. He would rather die at his own hand than take innocents down with him -- and that may very well be his fate if nothing changes, and sooner rather than later. But it’s not his own self with whom he is concerned. It’s the others. It’s Darwin and his wide white grin. It’s Alex, clapping him on the shoulder. Raven teasing him about sex. Logan’s cigars, Moira’s cautious compassion, and the steel core of Erik’s spine, solid and strong no matter how he seems to break.

This mystery, and its solution, feel so obvious and yet enigmatic all the same, like a word forgotten, caught on the tip of Charles’s tongue. As if one push is all it would take to unravel the nest of Erik’s lies.

So Charles has to pull himself together one last time. No more room for weakness. No tolerance for passive observation. He is a star, for Nature’s sake. Powered or not, he was not raised in the custom of being left in the dark. That he cares for Erik on a personal level has nothing to do with it - it is beyond clear that Erik has caught himself in something far deeper than Charles initially realized. Perhaps if he’d been more observant, or if Erik had been more careless, Charles would have started tying the threads together sooner. But here they are. This is now. The present is the only weapon Charles can wield.

He gives Darwin a weak smile and pushes his dinner away, standing from the table and heading for the door. He hears someone else’s chair scraping against the floor as they get up to follow him -- Erik’s ever-present guard, of course -- but he doesn’t even bother glancing over his shoulder to see who has been assigned the task of trailing him this time. He heads directly for the dormitories, where he settles on his bed, propped up against the headboard with his folded-over pillow for comfort, book propped up against bent knees as he half-heartedly picks his way through the calligraphy of the Common Tongue. He doesn’t bother getting up when it comes time for his usual lesson with Erik. Let Erik worry about where he is. Let Erik wonder.

In truth, concentration eludes him. He finds himself caught more on tangents of imagination, swept away by the elegance of a particular radical or quirk of style than the content of what’s been written. He’s reading more for sake of disguise at this point than for actual entertainment, and by the time the others start filtering into the room after dinner, sipping on kafei or settling in for card games, Charles is already asleep.

\--

\-- he awakens several hours later, drenched in sweat and shaking, skin cold and his heart attempting to beat its way out of his chest. The nightmare clings to the fringes of his conscious mind, twisting the shadows in the dormitory into fear. For a moment he swears he can see the nothingness that exists past the edges of the universe roiling in all the places he can’t quite touch. He blinks and the shadows take form: a man-shaped creature with a gaping maw, eyes like dark pits, ink spreading like blood beneath its skin, tracing veins and twisting itself into characters Charles doesn’t understand, and for a split second Charles thinks he recognizes the witchery of the Hirono tribes of several millenia ago. But then he blinks again and the figure is gone, sunk back into shadow.

Charles’s pulse is pounding in his throat and he throws the blankets off his legs -- suddenly too hot, now -- and crawls down to the foot of his bed. The palms of his hands are damp and he struggles to keep himself from falling off the ladder on the bunk beds. Telling himself there’s nothing there, that it’s all in his imagination, is a frail comfort. Knowing something isn’t real doesn’t make it feel _less_ real -- especially when Charles can’t rely on his telepathy to tell the difference without putting everyone on the ship at risk. 

As soon as his feet touch the floor it comes over him again in a wave: this time, a feeling as if his entire body is run through with electricity. He can _hear_ it, buzzing in his ears even as it contorts his spine into an unnatural arch, Charles’s head thrown back, the electric feeling zipping down through his entire body to fizzle out at the tips of his fingers and toes. Only then is his body his own again. Twitching, a muscle in his neck forcibly jerking his head every thirty seconds, but. Controlled. ...Alive.

Charles’s mouth is dry and he drops down to his knees, crawling across the floor, heading for the thin line of light beneath the dormitory door. If he can make it to the hall, he tells himself, everything will be okay. Never mind that down here the floor is tilting, black metal cold and heartless beneath his hands and shins. He can hear the faint echo of a laugh and he shivers again, pressing the heel of one damp hand to his brow and forcing himself to breathe in slow, deep. 

The shadows are moving again, and he fears that it is he himself who is dying. Turning into a black hole, soon to suck all matter into his core, crushing the ship with the force of his own impossible gravity. 

Another delusion. He battles it with his eyes wide open, keenly certain that if he were to close them, it would only make matters worse.

He makes it to the door and grasps onto the knob, pulling himself to his feet and slipping out into the corridor in one swift movement before he can look back, before he has the chance to see the inevitable creature hovering just over his shoulder with that macabre grin and bottomless eyes.

The empty corridor is better. Charles leans back against the wall and rests a moment, finding the fraying threads of his own telepathy and wrapping them back up tight, forcing his power to remain something blanched and bloodless. Incapable of causing harm, as long as he never lets down his guard, not even for one single second.

But too soon the visions are creeping back and the emptiness of the hall no longer feels safe. Instead, it’s a threat. Charles can imagine all kinds of fell creatures approaching, can feel their presence in his bones, like a lump of ice beneath his sternum.

He runs, even knowing it’s all in his mind, even knowing he can never run from himself. He runs because he worries that staying still will mean surrender. That giving up means giving in, and the inevitable death that entails. He knows where he’s headed, at least on some level, but somehow it still manages to surprise him that he ends up back in that hallway, standing in the dark outside the empty library.

In the space of a breath, the hallucinations vanish: the phantoms are sucked from the hall and back into the shadows, the dizzying sense of nothingness falls away. That strange electricity still sparks at the nape of Charles's neck, but it's dulled now, present but easily pushed aside. He pauses with his hand on the door handle, worried that Erik may be inside the dark room, waiting for him, the realization coming alongside the certainty that if Erik is there then it is too late to hide; he is touching brass, and no doubt Erik will sense Charles's hand on the metal as easily as if Charles were touching his own bare skin.

Charles sucks in a quick breath and forces the thrill of his nerves aside as he pushes the door inward. The room is dark, lit only by the glimmer of stars outside the window, casting the furniture and books in a dim pewter glow. Charles wets his lips and flicks on the light switch. 

Erik's not there. The library is just as Charles had left it the previous night, papers scattered across the desk and the hearth cold. Charles lets the door fall shut behind him and crosses to the desk, sitting down and sifting through the parchment to find the smooth metal edges of Erik's tablet. He's surprised to find it still here; after witnessing Erik so upset after the incident with the wine bottle. Though he supposes if Erik suspected a member of the crew rather than Charles, he may have no reason to hide the logs. The crew seems to be well aware of whatever it is Erik has done and is planning to do. As for Charles -- well. Charles suspects Erik vastly underestimates Charles's interests. That, or he has mistaken silence for innocence. Charles would find the second notion offensive if he wasn't so grateful that Erik's misconceptions allowed him to work free of the Commander's suspicion.

Charles pushes the button to turn the tablet on and the screen lights up before him, opening to the same place as Charles had left off last. Erik's face is frozen there, his gaze turned down, just a sliver of grey iris visible and his lips twisted into a frown. 

His finger hesitates over the tablet for a moment. Does he truly need to put himself through this again? Is there anything Erik could possibly say to redeem himself from what Charles fears he may have done? Can Charles bear to sit and watch Erik talk so coldly of lives lost when some part of him, despite everything, still burns for this man? 

Maybe it's that same part of him that chooses, in the end. The part that wants to hear something different coming from Erik's lips. The part of him that believes Erik is fundamentally _good_. That a man who would go to such pains to save Charles from certain death, to teach him to communicate, and to give him a position in his crew until he can be safely stowed on Sihwa, cannot be completely cold blooded. 

He presses play. Erik's gaze lifts to meet his, as if he can somehow see Charles through the glass screen. This log is different from all those that came before. Before, Erik was casual: sleeves rolled up, leaning back in his chair, recounting ideas to himself rather than to an audience. But here he sits ramrod-straight, clothed in full dress uniform. The silver buttons on his collar gleam, tiny lens flares that do not entirely manage to distract Charles from the hard lines of Erik's face. The last time Charles saw Erik wearing an expression at all similar to this was when he was on the bridge and the Federation ship was firing missiles in their direction.

"I am Commander Erik Lehnsherr, late of the ship _Arkham_ ," Erik says. His voice is steady, deeper than Charles remembers, and Charles does not miss the absence of the formal 'IGF' label that would declare the _Arkham_ as a vessel operating as an arm of the Intergalactic Federation. 

“This video is being simultaneously broadcast on all IGF networked channels as well as the primary media outlets on the ten major planets of the Central and Western galaxies. No doubt your various local governments are, at this very moment, convening and struggling to find the most euphemistic way to present this information to you. I, however, trust the intergalactic peoples to make their own judgments about what has occurred, without sugarcoating or propaganda.”

There's a knot twisting in Charles's gut that he can’t translate to words, or not just yet anyway. Whatever this is, whatever Erik’s doing, if Charles ever harbored hope for a happy ending it’s waning fast.

“The IFG command planet has been destroyed. Unfortunately, if our models are correct, its moons and two nearby planets have been destroyed along with it. Those men and women gave their lives for peace in these galaxies.” Erik pauses, and for a moment Charles thinks he might break -- but then he continues on, voice as unwavering as always. 

“Sebastian Shaw is dead. The Shaw Corporation is over. I did not do this simply to avenge the deaths of my people in the Eastern galaxies, but to preserve the future of the mutant diaspora. Not only has Shaw’s quest for stellar energy sources caused the formation of black holes which have destroyed hundreds of inhabited solar systems, but he has been actively implicated in the destruction of mutant kind across all the galaxies. The media is under his control; everything he’s been feeding you has been a lie. The lies stop now. Some may call me a terrorist for my actions, but I did not do this to inspire fear. My own death proves this was not a grab for power."

Erik takes in a small breath, and says: "Let the power be restored to the people, where it belongs.” Then he reaches forward to touch something on the screen, and the tablet goes dark in Charles’s shaking hands.

\--

END OF PART ONE


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to the glorious **Tahariel** , without whose late-night betaing endeavors this chapter would not be before you. 
> 
> I've uploaded a [playlist](http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com/post/72499379854/the-starry-sky-and-the-deep-sea-pt-1-the) for Part One of Starry Sky to my tumblr, so go check it out and download it if you have a chance! :)
> 
> As always: thanks for sticking with me.

Charles replays the video log three, four -- five times, battling the nausea that swells hotter every time he hears Erik’s voice speak:  
 _  
avenge the deaths of my people_

_two nearby planets have been destroyed_

_terrorist_

_Commander Erik Lehnsherr, late of the ship Arkham_

_late of the ship_

_my own death_

At first, he hadn’t understood. It was difficult enough to keep breathing; focusing his fractured mind on Erik’s words was nearly beyond him. The Shaw Corporation -- well, Charles has known all along that the conglomerate is behind the steady, unyielding genocide of the stars for solar energy. If Shaw is dead -- but _is_ he dead? Charles can’t get those words out of his head: _late_ and _… my own death …._

By the third time he listens to the tape, he can’t escape the hollow certainty that settles in the pit of his stomach: that he has finally discovered the true purpose of the _Arkham’s_ crew. Shaw is not dead, not as Charles had initially hoped. The video log is recorded, but it hasn’t yet been broadcast. This isn’t Erik recounting deeds already past. This is Erik’s plan. This is a suicide mission.

Charles’s heart stumbles, and he drops the tablet onto the desk with a clatter. All other thoughts have been seared from his mind, and the only thing that remains is this: Erik. He must get to Erik.

The electric sensation is back; a jolt zaps down his spine, and it feels as if his very bones have caught alight. But he can walk -- can breathe through the buzzing in his ears and carry himself, even on trembling limbs, out of the library and back into the darkened hall.

He’s only been to Erik’s chambers twice before, when he first came on board the _Arkham_. Even so, he thinks he remembers the way -- through coiling halls and down steel-wrought stairs, his palms leaving damp marks on the handrails. He seeks Erik out as if he were the one with Erik’s power, tracing the skeleton of this metal ship to its molten iron core. 

 

Of one thing he is certain: Erik cannot be allowed to die. Charles will not sacrifice him -- no, not even so that all the stars may live. He can’t. He refuses to entertain rational propositions of cost and expected utility. It’s simply that the very thought of a universe that doesn’t have Erik in it makes him want to fall apart. It’s impossible to tell any longer, if the visions he sees of Erik’s face, the gleaming buttons of Erik’s uniform, Erik’s taped declaration playing itself out against the dark every time he closes his eyes, is memory or hallucination. He just knows he doesn’t want to see it anymore. He wants to undo this before it’s ever been done.

He drags his hand along the wall as if that will lead him where he wants to go; he doesn’t need light, doesn’t need to see anything but the shadows closing in. His body remembers even if his mind does not. This body is so young; a thousand memories are all he’s had of this world, nothing compared to the infinite capacity of a star to recall. 

He comes to a stop outside a tall dark door and reaches out to touch the keypad beside the lock. Yes. Yes, he remembers: Moira MacTaggert, punching in a six-digit code to get off the elevator. He couldn’t see her hand. He can’t remember -- can’t possibly know, not without using his power --

Charles grits his teeth, eyes squeezed tightly shut. He can’t stand it, that he might know, might _finally_ know, and still be left to stand here outside the door to Erik’s hall, useless and pathetic. 

He slides down to the floor, knees hitting the steel hard enough to bruise, and crumples in on himself as it sinks in to him, at last, the true extent of what he was. What he is now, in comparison. As a star, he used to dream of walking in man’s body. Exploring space in these very ships, standing side by side with crew and Commander. Only when he imagined it, he hadn’t been mortal. Hadn’t been deprived of his voice. Hadn’t had his ability to persuade the minds of others stolen by his own kin.

He used to be strong. He can see it more clearly than ever from where he sits now. They didn’t exile him because of his ideology. No: he was exiled because of his strength. Because they feared him, and what he could become. What it would mean for a race of stars who communicated through the mind if one of their own had the power to alter their every thought without their knowledge.

Here, among the humans, he is not only voiceless but powerless. What chance does he have to change even his own fate, when his life has been stripped from him? 

Well, whatever strength he may have left in this fragile human body, it isn’t to be found down here on the floor, Charles tells himself. Time to stop wallowing in his own self-pity and … go _read_ , if nothing else, just to get his mind off this until morning.

He reaches up and grabs the handle for leverage -- and to his surprise the handle _moves_ under his weight, turning, and the door opens. 

Charles immediately looks to the keypad. It’s still blank, its screen dark. 

Erik has left the door unlocked. 

His pulse is already faster as he steps inside, into the lush carpeted hall of the officers’ quarters. The electric sensation at the nape of his neck is worse than ever, but he isn’t turning back. He doesn’t believe in signs, but he does believe in opportunities.

The carpeted floor feels lush between Charles’s bare toes as he creeps down the hall, holding his breath as if expecting someone to be lurking in the shadows, ready to leap out at him at any moment. He still remembers which door leads to Erik’s rooms; he stands outside it for a moment, unsure, but it doesn’t take long for the frustration and fear he’d felt in the library to boil up inside him once more. 

Charles twists the knob and shoulders the door open, lips set into a hard, thin line, swearing to himself that he’ll _make_ Erik understand. That none of these things, none of what Erik said on that tape, will happen if Charles has any say in the matter.

But he falls short the second he’s stepped into the room. Where he’d expected to find Erik’s study dark and empty, there is a lamp lit atop Erik’s steel desk, and the Commander himself sitting behind it, silent, arms folded across his chest and his face cast into darkness.

Charles almost cries out; he bites down on his lower lip just in time, hard enough that he winces, visibly.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Erik says, as if reading Charles’s thoughts. “After last night, I turned on the camera in the library. I didn’t expect anyone to return. I _certainly_ didn’t expect it to be you.”

Charles just stands there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, fighting the urge to turn and run, to sprint back to the dormitory, as if that would somehow put him out of Erik’s reach. But this entire ship is Erik’s, not just by Command but by the metal that sings in Erik’s blood. Charles wonders, in that moment, how he ever felt alone; how he could ever have felt anything but Erik’s presence, constant, threaded through the walls and floor and ceiling.

“Yet here you are,” Erik continues. He unfolds his arms, but in the next second he’s crossing his legs; his posture remains closed-off in that human way which only became meaningful to Charles after he lost his ability to speak. Erik’s hand rests on his desk, forefinger tapping twice on its surface. “You’ve been prying, Charles.”

Heat floods Charles’s body and in the next second he steps forward, closes the distance between them, reeling back enough that when he slaps Erik across the face it has the full force of his weight behind it.

Erik hisses, pained, but Charles only gets that split second before he’s reminded that ship Commanders aren’t just explorers, they’re _military_. Erik lunges forward, out of the chair, slamming his body against Charles’s and throwing him back until Charles is pinned against the steel wall behind Erik’s desk, one of Erik’s hands curled around his throat -- not tightly enough to cut off breath, but at his throat all the same, pressing against his windpipe.

But it’s not fear that burns in Charles’s veins. Or not fear for himself, at least. His face is hot and wet as he lashes out, beating his fists against Erik’s arms and torso, kicking at his shins, letting that terrible knot that throbs inside his chest untangle itself just a little bit with every blow. Somehow he manages to swallow the awful sounds begging to claw their way out his mouth. He tastes salt. Tastes something even more bitter, too.

He lands every blow, but they barely seem to phase Erik at all. Erik has his head pressed to the wall next to Charles’s; Charles can hear his breaths heavy in his right ear, shallow and choked. 

“You weren’t supposed to find out,” Erik says, his tone tighter than Charles has ever heard it before. “Fuck … Charles, you were never supposed to _know_.”

Charles doesn’t care to hear Erik’s excuses. He doesn’t want apologies. He jerks his head forward, pressing his throat hard against Erik’s hand, hard enough that he can’t breathe anymore, because if Erik can’t go through with it Charles can damn well strangle himself. 

“Stop that,” Erik says sharply. Charles kicks him in the kneecap. “Charles -- _stop_ , I don’t want to hurt you, I ….”

But Charles has hold of his wrist, keeping Erik’s hand in place before he can let go, and he’s surprised to find that he’s just as strong as Erik in some ways, that they’ve reached a stalemate; Charles can’t pull Erik any closer, but Erik can’t pull himself away, either. In his head, Charles is screaming, and he can barely hear the ragged half-gasps of his own breath over that, the air catching halfway down his windpipe, not quite making it to his lungs.

“Please -- ” Erik’s voice cracks.

The need is abrupt and overwhelming. Charles reaches with his free hand and tangles his fingers in Erik’s hair, pulling his head down and close enough that he can press their lips together. Erik makes a strange noise against Charles’s mouth but it’s soft and muffled and Charles ignores it, letting his grip on Erik’s wrist relax enough for Erik’s hand to fall away from his throat so that Charles can breathe Erik’s breath, kissing him with every ounce of the rough hostility and desperation he has bottled up inside, biting his Erik’s lip and _daring_ him to bleed -- and he’s not hitting Erik, not anymore; his hands are twisted in the thin cotton of Erik’s t-shirt, holding onto him as if Erik’s the only thing keeping him up off the ground.

The next shock comes when Erik’s lips part and he finally starts to kiss Charles back, leaning in to press their chests together. Charles can feel the heat of Erik’s skin through his shirt, can smell the low scent of him. Erik’s mouth is warm and insistent. His hand reaches for Charles’s throat again, but this time it’s to curl around the back of Charles’s neck, the tips of his fingers slipping up into Charles’s hair. Erik touches him like he’s fragile, and Charles can’t care enough to be offended. This is all he wants. As for the electric thrill down his spine, he can no longer tell if it’s a delusion produced by his brain or simply the effect of Erik’s touch. 

_Electromagnetism_ , Charles thinks almost giddily -- Erik’s power. Not just metal. He’d almost forgotten. Electromagnetism. If he can feel that spark in his nerves, then surely Erik can as well. 

Erik’s other hand is at Charles’s waist, sliding down his ribcage toward his hips as if memorizing the line of his body. Even in Charles’s most daring fantasies, it had never been like this. How could he have invented the way it feels to have Erik’s large hand spreading wide at the small of his back? Or the elation of being wanted, when Erik pulls him closer? He keeps his power restrained only by a thread; it’s too tempting, the desire to sink into Erik’s mind and merge the two of them together. 

Charles is considering whether or not to slip his hands up underneath Erik’s t-shirt, to feel his muscles firm and warm beneath bare palms, when suddenly Erik draws back. For a moment they’re both silent, their heavy breaths mingling between them. Erik’s hands have fallen abnormally still, his gaze flickering between Charles’s eyes and mouth. Even in the dim lamplight, Charles can see the flush on Erik’s lower lip where he bit him.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Erik says, after several seconds have passed. “I’m sorry.”

Charles frowns and grabs hold of Erik’s shoulders, forcibly pushing him two steps back, so that Erik’s hands fall away from his body. He doesn’t think he needs a voice for the look on his face to be interpretable.

“You’re leaving tomorrow,” Erik explains, and Charles doesn’t mistake the note of regret that strains his voice, even if Erik tries to hide it. “We’re landing on Sihwa. There’s no future here. You must understand that.” Erik’s gaze drops from Charles’s, and Charles suspects he’s dwelling on the words he spoke in his captain’s log, the words Charles has now overheard. “No future with me, anyway.” He says it so softly that Charles can scarcely hear the words at all.

This time, Charles shoves him. Erik stumbles backward, catching himself with one hand on the edge of his steel desk. 

“It has to be done, Charles! You watched the video. You _know_ why. Shaw can’t keep getting away with this. He -- he killed _everyone I love_ , do you understand that? _Can_ you even understand? Everyone. There’s nothing left. Nothing but dust in the entire Eastern galaxies, thanks to his money and his thirst for solar power. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like.”

 _There were stars in those galaxies, too_ , Charles wants to snap. _I didn’t know them, but they were my people, just like the mutants were yours. Every time a star is drained, another one of_ my _family dies._

Instead he just pushes at Erik again, fruitless now that Erik is backed up against the desk of course. Charles reaches past him, grabbing a sheet of important-looking paper and flipping it over to the blank back side. Using Erik’s own pen, he writes out:

_I am very sorry this happened. But killing yourself is not the answer._

He thrusts the paper in Erik’s face, watches Erik’s eyes move as he reads Charles’s undoubtedly poorly-written characters. Charles isn’t sure how much concept he can get across with his grasp of written Common, but he has to try.

“And you would fashion yourself as the man with all the answers, is that it?” Erik’s words all but drip disdain. “I did not make this decision lightly, Charles. I don’t have a death wish.”

Charles steals the paper back from Erik’s hands.

_Don’t you?_

“ _No_ ,” Erik says, though Charles is certain he says it with too much force. He knows the look behind Erik’s eyes, now. How had he not recognized it when he first came on board? That cold, metallic glint. A hardness that will not allow fear to trespass. The slow-burning coals of a man who is waiting to die.

 _You will leave me in Sihwa, then, and hope that I don’t tell anyone before it’s too late?_ Charles writes out.

“You won’t tell anyone,” Erik says.

_You think I would rather see you dead than in prison?_

“I think that somewhere inside you, you agree with me. You think the Eastern galaxies will be it? You think Shaw would rather rule over a kingdom than over dust. But you’d be wrong. It’s not just money Shaw wants. It’s _power._ This isn’t about mining stars, it’s about proving to the universe that Shaw’s power is the only power, that Shaw is greater than Nature, that Shaw is God. Even if the universe is empty, and there is no one left to witness his triumph.”

 _You want to avenge your people?_ Charles writes, laboring over the character for ‘avenge,’ which is more complex than the rest and recently-learned. _You said that Shaw paid to destroy those galaxies._ It takes Charles three attempts to try to get across the idea of “financiering” in his limited written vocabulary; eventually he gives up, crossing the previous lines out heavily and falling back on the simplest language he can, chewing on his lower lip so fiercely that he can taste his own blood, his cheeks hot. _So prove to the Federation that Shaw is bad. Show courts your paper trail. Then: justice._

Erik lets out a sharp breath. “There is no paper trail,” he says. “There’s absolutely no hard evidence whatsoever tying Shaw to the crime.”

_Then how did you figure it out?_

Erik’s smile is thin and worn. “I was something of a protégé of his, once. Shaw’s. Before the Eastern galaxies fell.”

Charles isn’t sure what to say in response to that. Isn’t sure where to even begin asking questions, or whether he even should. Protégé implies mentorship. It implies a sort of intimacy of relationship, as if Erik and Shaw may once have been just as fierce a pair of allies as they are now as enemies. Such bonds aren’t broken easily. 

“A long time ago,” Erik says softly, his gaze sliding away from Charles’s. Silence, for a moment – and then Erik shakes his head, as if casting off discarded thoughts. “On this ship, we all are agreed. This is what must be done. Our lives are a very small price to pay.”

_”This?” What is “this?” What are you going to do, Erik?_

“Ah.” Erik glances back to Charles, something like real amusement finally showing in the lines at the corners of his eyes. “Nice try, but no – I’m not sharing such secrets with you. When we put you down on Sihwa tomorrow, you’ll not know anything more than Shaw does: that being second-hand knowledge of our intent, but nothing of our methods.”

Charles wants to scream. He wants to beat at Erik all over again, this time until Erik is bruised and bloody and rendered completely incapable of carrying out any sort of plan, suicidal or otherwise.

 _What if I had a better plan?_ Charles writes down, hurriedly enough that his characters almost smear together. _What if you didn’t have to die? If I could make Shaw dead, and anyone else too, without you doing any of this?_

It’s a desperate plea, but Charles has gone past the point of desperation. He hasn’t even had time to think through the reckless offer, to analyze the benefits versus the risks of using his curse like this, letting his mind or his voice cut down Erik’s enemies like a blade. He just knows that it’s better than seeing Erik dead. He’d do any number of gut-wrenching things if it meant Erik would be safe. The thought scares him a little, but not nearly as much as its alternative.

“How can you know your plan is better than mine, when you don’t even know what my plan is?” Erik says.

 _I don’t want you to die,_ Charles writes down, painstakingly slowly this time, and he underlines the words three times in thick black ink. He doesn’t recognize the hot sting in his eyes for what it is until he lifts his head back toward Erik and feels the tears slide down his cheeks.

For a fleeting moment, Charles has hope that Erik might break – but the strain in Erik’s expression doesn’t seem to extend to his resolve. Charles gulps down his sobs, fighting to stay silent even when it feels as if he’s been torn down to his core, wrecked and still clutching at wisps, half-formed ideas to deter Erik, each more crazed and manic than the last.

“Oh, Charles,” Erik says, and there’s something almost like pity coloring his voice as he steps forward, pulling Charles into an embrace. The fingers of Erik’ right hand toy with his hair, stroking the back of his head slowly, as if he could soothe him into submission. Charles clenches his eyes shut, shaking against Erik’s chest, heaving in great gasps of air scented with the warmth of Erik’s skin. He’s so caught by the steady motion of Erik’s fingers at his crown and the salty taste of his own tears hot on his lips that he doesn't think about what Erik is doing with his other hand, neither suspects nor cares, not until the needle is piercing the flesh above his jugular. 

There is time only for a burst of surprise tinged with fear, and a brief flare of pain, before the dark waters of sleep surge up like a tide and drown him.

\--


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my favorite chocolate macaroon **Tahariel** for betaing!
> 
> Also, also, also!! Check out the amazeballs art **jeriais** did for this fic [here!](http://jeriais.tumblr.com/post/75946863466%20)
> 
> Asix-oud also did some heart-stoppingly fantastic work [here](http://asix-oud.tumblr.com/post/75482656349/the-starry-sky-and-the-deep-sea-by-spicedpiano).
> 
> Both of them are geniuses and you should remind them of this fact.

The beeping sound is what wakes him. A steady pulse, slow enough that it’s almost calming, almost enough to pull him under and let him lose himself in the waves of it, unraveling. He’s somewhere soft and hot, and he swears he hasn’t felt this languorous, this luxurious, since he was still in star’s form. 

That, if nothing else, is what manages to pierce through the soft sweetness of Charles’s heavy limbs, and he remembers to yank his telepathy back just in time, pulse jumping and his brain suddenly skipping from sleep to alertness without any pause between. His eyes snap open and he’s - not where he is supposed to be.

The ceiling is wood, not steel. Real wood, a concept Charles only has definition for because he’s seen it in millions of memories. Dark and knotted and shot through with the dull iron glint of nails. He’s lying in a bed under white linens, skin cooled by the breeze that wafts down from the ancient-looking fan that spins overhead. He can hear other sounds now, filtering in around the steady beeping noise. People talking and laughing and yelling. The vague, distant burble of some kind of music. Clack of shoes on a floor. Several pairs of shoes, back and forth, somewhere to his very far left. 

Charles’s entire body feels as if someone’s replaced his blood with liquid mercury, heavy and foreign. He barely has the strength to push himself up to sag half-heartedly against the headboard, already gasping for air, the beeping sound stuttering to a faster rhythm. 

He’s not on the ship. Factual knowledge is the most he can process right now. Anything else - anything at all, whether it be how he got here or who put him here ( _Erik_ ) - he pushes the thought firmly down and locks it deep, but not before it’s had the chance to scrape against the inside of his chest, like Charles has scratched at a still-raw wound. 

Fact. He’s not on the ship. Next fact to ascertain: Where, then, _is_ he?

To his right there is an open window. Hammered glass means outer planet - Charles can still see the ridges left by the glassmaker’s tools. Outside all he sees are roofs with wooden shingles, many in obvious disrepair. Sihwa - although even that knowledge is just an assumption. Still not fact. And not specific enough.

He looks to his left. A closed door that leads no doubt to a hallway, given the sound of people and footsteps from outside it. Another door on the adjacent wall, open: a bathroom. Directly by his bed is an older version of the medical monitors the Commander had been hooked up to on the _Arkham_ when he’d been ill. There’s also a glass bottle of some clear liquid hooked up to a tube which snakes down, coiling on the bed once before vanishing into the skin of Charles’s forearm. 

That startles him more than anything, and he doesn’t really think about it before he claws at the tape holding the tube down, yanking it out of his vein. A brief spurt of blood splatters his skin and the white bedsheets. Charles rubs at it with the heel of his other hand but all that accomplishes is to stain the skin of both arm and palm an obvious rust color. 

Hospital. There. Good. He’s in a hospital. To incorporate the assumption, he is in a hospital on Sihwa.

The idea that he might have lost control of his powers while coming out from whatever he was drugged with and hit the minds of so many people, crammed into a single building - never mind what he’d do to an entire planetside city - is sobering. 

He can’t stay here. That much is obvious, even if nothing else is. Charles leans forward to push the sheet down off his legs and then wraps his arm around his knees, forcibly pulling his legs over the side of the bed. The thought of moving them under his own power is an exhausting one, but he’s going to have to. 

For a moment, though, he just lets them dangle while he tries to settle himself, nausea battling dizziness for dominance. In the end it’s Charles that wins out, and he pushes himself forward enough that his bare feet are resting flat on the floor. The IV pole is conveniently placed for Charles to haul himself up to standing, letting his center of gravity rest somewhere between his hips and the pole for a while, all but clutching hold of it, just until he’s certain he isn’t going to fall over the second he lets go.

Focus on the plan, he has to remind himself once he’s finally standing on his own feet again. He can’t let his emotions distract him. Not until he’s very well clear of this place. 

He half-stumbles over to the dresser in the corner and pulls open drawers until he finds the clothing he’d come in with. It’s only as he’s stripping out of the hospital-issue gown that he finds the thin silver stickers placed around his chest and ribs, and recognises them: they’re watching his heart rate. He isn’t sure how far the wireless transmission goes, but he’d better be out on the street before the signal cuts out. When he loses control - and yes, but it is certainly starting to feel more _when_ than _if_ \- he can’t still be here, strapped down to a hospital bed, surrounded by people whose only crimes are illness and concern.

Charles yanks his shirt over his head. Pajamas. Why did it have to be _pajamas_ he’d been wearing? They may pass for real clothes out on the street - a plain grey shirt and loose black cotton trousers - but that depends on what the people of Sihwa consider normal clothes. He can’t find his shoes, though if this oppressive heat is any indication, it’s entirely possible the citizens of Sihwa are perfectly accustomed to running around their streets barefoot.

There’s a leather bag stuffed into the drawer as well, with his name written in Common on a piece of paper pinned to the front in what he recognizes to be Erik’s own sharp calligraphy. Opening the bag reveals enough money to last Charles at least a month if he spends frugally. So, it’s done, then. Erik really has left him here. Left Charles to start a new life as Erik goes to end his.

Charles slips the bag into his pocket and takes a few unsteady steps forward, testing to see if the coins make a jingling sound. They do, but it’s subtle enough that he can hope it will go unnoticed on the busy streets outside. The last thing he needs is to be mugged and left broken and penniless as well as alone.

Some of his strength is returning to him now, at least; walking is getting easier. He gnaws at the plastic ID bracelet on his wrist. Thank the stars for small details - Sihwa is primitive enough that they haven’t upgraded to the new holographic IDs - but they aren’t so far behind that they don’t have an alarm embedded in the plastic. If he tries walking out of here with this thing still around his wrist, every doctor, nurse, and orderly on the floor will be upon him in two seconds flat.

The plastic stretches and Charles squeezes his eyes shut, trying to yank just hard enough to break the band and not his teeth. He’s unsuccessful in that regard, but he does manage to widen the bracelet enough that he can slip it off his hand if he tucks his thumb in tight against his palm, and drops it on the bed so someone can find and reprogram it later, if it’s salvageable.

His temples are starting to throb, but by now that’s nothing unfamiliar. He’s started to recognize the symptoms of ignoring his telepathy, and while they’ve been getting worse (he still recalls last night’s hallucinations with startling vividness), they haven’t killed him yet. By now, any other star would almost certainly be dead. Perhaps Charles’s special power has something to do with it; he’s always been able to reach farther than any other star, and his power of mind control, while it got him exiled in the first place, did necessitate a great deal of personal willpower. Maybe willpower’s all there is to it. If he wills himself to keep living hard enough, then he’ll survive. In unceasing agony, perhaps, but survive nonetheless.

Survive. Yes, the word is appropriate. Because even though his heart beats and his lungs reflexively draw in air, he doesn’t feel quite … _alive._ Whatever “alive” is, it was stolen from him when he left the ship. Here he’s just a shell of blood and meat, purposeless. He’s had the ability to explain what he truly is - a star - to Erik for quite some time now, but being around humans has only served to make it perfectly clear just how little they’d believe him even if he did tell. Maybe Erik would have, eventually, but any chance of convincing him is gone now. Running to the magistrate of this city with his story would only end up with him sitting back here in a hospital bed. Using any other technique would be deadly for the mind it was used upon. The stars didn’t just take his powers, they took his _evidence._ He’s no star in human form. Not anymore. He’s just a madman, abandoned on a foreign planet, lost and alone.

Charles wanders over to the sink on the far side of the room and stares at his reflection in the mirror. He still finds the human face staring back at him strange, but he doesn’t think he looks nearly so young anymore. Or perhaps that’s just wishful thinking. He knows from past memories he’s seen from other humans that some of the outer planets are bad places to be if you’re young and good-looking. Too many slavers, and too much gold in the constables’ pockets for them to care.

He rubs his hands over his head a few times until his hair looks more intentionally tousled than just … tousled. Whatever happens, he can’t afford to look like he doesn’t know where he’s going. 

Charles slips quietly out into the hall. No one notices a young man wearing what appear to be street clothes, not so long as he walks with a steady gait and his chin held high. Doctors and nurses look over patient charts on tablets, too caught up in their own conversation to see him. Patients roll past in wheelchairs, or walk wobbling on the arms of attendants. At the end of the hall, an ancient-looking robot swipes a grimy mop along the floor.

The elevators are to the right, by the nurses’ station. Too risky. The nurses have seen him more than even the doctors, he expects. They’ll recognize him. So he takes the stairs, ducking through the door beneath the dim red ‘Exit’ light. 

The stairwell is poorly-lit and surprisingly empty. Charles descends as quickly as he can when he’s still so light-headed, holding on to the steel railing and taking the bottom two steps at once on the landings, then pauses on the ground floor, considering the door to the outside. Sometimes these things are rigged with alarms, he thinks he remembers. Or is that only after dusk? He can’t recall the specifics.

Not that he’s taking any chances, he tells himself firmly, turning instead to head out into the hall once more. He’s more anonymous down here, in the reception area, where throngs of people are congregating for visitors’ passes and to be registered for admission. 

_How long have I been out?_ He wonders if Erik stood here himself, with Charles unconscious in his arms, or if he simply paid someone to expedite the process so he could get on with, well, getting on.

More likely Erik didn’t do it himself, at all. He probably had Moira do it.

Charles’s lips tighten grimly and he pushes on, slipping through the crowd - and he’s surprised that no one seems to notice him, especially now, when he’s unsteady on his feet, his human body feeling stranger than ever, but scarcely a person glances his way as he steps out the front door and out into the busy streets of the port city. 

Sihwa is an unusual planet, as they go: decades since it was terraformed, and still no one has bothered to pave the streets or integrate a fiber network into the infrastructure. People travel around on wooden carts and in the occasional rusty car, spewing exhaust. The two suns beat down hard upon the desert land, sending sweat trickling down the nape of Charles’s neck.

If Charles is certain of anything, it’s that he can’t stay in the city. There are too many minds here, too many distractions at play. He doesn’t quite trust himself to be able to hold his power back much longer. Not with the way the headaches have been getting. Perhaps it’s a relief that he’s off the _Arkham_. Better to lose Erik to war than lose him to Charles’s own hand. 

But the buildings are too tall to see over; Charles can’t tell which of the winding roads leads out into the wilderness. So he just chooses one and goes, hoping it will lead him out of the hustle and bustle soon enough. 

After an hour or so of walking, his stomach growling, he’s forced to stop at one of the many stalls lining the street. A woman stands behind the stove, stirring noodles in broth, humming a tune to herself. Charles waits at the counter, pretending to examine the selection of meat and vegetable additions, but when she still takes no notice of him he lifts his head again and raps on the counter with his knuckles, plastering a smile on his face to offset the rudeness. 

Even so, it’s several seconds before the woman sets her wooden spoon down and turns toward him, wiping hands on her apron, still humming. Charles mimes writing, the best way he’s learned how to request a pen and pad of paper. And then her gaze glances away, off over his shoulder, then down. She picks up a knife and wipes it clean on a damp rag. When she glances up, Charles mimes again. No response, just another glance both ways down the street, apparently choosing to ignore completely the young man standing outside her stall, waiting to place his order, coin in hand.

She looks back down at the counter and starts chopping a flank of meat, well-sharpened blade slicing through the muscle and fat with ease. Charles’s face burns with shame and anger; he finds himself glaring at the nametag on her shirt, picking out the characters. Betty. A name from a book Erik had him read once, that’s the only reason Charles even knows what the word says. And if Erik hadn’t left him here on this _fucking_ planet, with nothing but some unmarked cash in his pockets, he wouldn’t be in this position: being ignored by a simple street noodle-pusher, barefoot and alone.

Someone comes up beside him and the woman looks up, smiling. “How can I help you today, sir?”

Charles frowns and glances at the man standing next to him as he orders a beef noodle soup, the woman still chatting amiably with him while she tosses lemongrass into the broth. It’s almost as if she doesn’t even realize he’s there. As if _neither_ of them realize he’s there - because the man hasn’t so much as spared Charles a glance either. Charles grabs the man’s sleeve and tugs on it; the man glances round, gaze even passing over Charles’ for a moment, lips turning into a small frown and his hand going to his purse - but then he looks away again, tells the woman: “Never let your focus down on these streets, eh? Lousy with pickpockets, all of ‘em.”

Charles looks at his own arm, half-expecting to find it’s gone invisible, but he’s still here: solid, not drifting apart from his human body in some bizarre mind-form. He whirls around, heart pounding, planning to dash down the last alley he passed and disappear into the shadows until he can sort out where he’s gone wrong, but someone’s already standing there right behind him, dressed in pure and stainless white.

He opens his mouth on reflex but her hand is pressed against it before he can cry out, holding the sound in, silencing him. 

“They might not be able to see you, but they can still die because of you,” Emma says, lowering her hand slowly. The smirk on her lips is the only confirmation he gets that Emma appreciates what must be an astoundingly ridiculous look on his face. “Follow me,” she says, turning and leading him out into the main street once more.

Charles has to walk quickly not to lose her in the crowds. They seem to take no notice of either of them, but while Charles finds himself second-guessing every footstep and scrambling to stay out of people’s way, Emma moves seamlessly between them. Charles hadn’t realized how powerful her telepathy is. Not the mere whisper of communication that most psionic humans seem to share, then; she’s _anticipating_ their moves. Or controlling them. 

The thought that there could be a human out there like him, not only able but willing to make puppets out of people to suit her own ends, makes Charles’s stomach uneasy.

He’s relieved when Emma leads them onto a side street, where the crowd is sparser, but Charles doesn’t think his analysis of the area would be too off to say that it’s seedier, too: these are the ones who make their livings on the misfortunes of others, gambling and stealing and conning. There’s blood still wet on the dirt road. He keeps close to Emma’s side, even knowing as he does that none can see him pass. He wishes he could speak, if only to ask where she’s taking him; old suspicions rise up in his gut like nausea, tension buzzing like static electricity in his chest.

They turn the corner, walking past the open windows of a bustling bar. To Charles’s surprise, this is where Emma chooses to push open the door and lead him inside. The place is darker than Charles was expecting, and grittier, and when she sits them down at a table the surface feels strangely sticky to the touch. Despite her flawless uniform, Emma doesn’t seem overly concerned about stains. She settles into her chair with comfort, legs crossing elegantly at the knees, her hands clasping together in her lap.

Charles stares at her and says nothing. There’s no need to speak aloud the only question that is throbbing in his mind, reverberating over and over again, demanding an answer. 

“Oh, please,” Emma says at last, as if he’d spoken at all. “You’re not the first star I’ve met in my time, sugar. Though given your usual life expectancy, I’m surprised you’re still alive.” She’s swinging one leg idly, as though this were the most mundane conversation in the world. Charles can’t begin to fathom how she knows of other stars become human - perhaps they are drawn to her telepathy, given the shared mode of communication? 

Charles gestures, his standard hand signal to request paper and a pen, but Emma just shakes her head and smiles. 

“No need for that,” she says. “I intend to be doing most of the talking here.” Whatever expression Charles is making must amuse her, because her smile widens slightly. “If you’re wondering how I knew about your whole ‘speak and the world dies’ issue, it’s just an educated guess. No words, and no telepathy, either? Besides - it is very much your people’s style, isn’t it? That sort of thing.”

Charles isn’t entirely sure what she means, but she goes on without him, lifting a perfectly-manicured hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “The ship’s still here, obviously,” she says, and Charles can’t help it; his pulse stumbles in his throat as a spike of something desperate and bright soars up inside him. The ship’s still here. Erik hasn’t left yet - Charles could still go, could hide away somewhere on the ship perhaps, where Erik wouldn’t find him until it was too late, and then he’d have a _real_ chance to talk Erik out of this nonsense - “A few ‘unexpected repairs,’” Emma is continuing on, as if she hasn’t noticed the way Charles is suddenly sitting much straighter in his chair. “You’ll be back on board in less than an hour, right where you want to be.”

It’s too good to be true. That’s the only thing Charles keeps thinking, over and over again. That there must be a catch. Emma has no reason to help him. If her goal is protecting Erik’s mission, then bringing him back on board is the worst thing she could do; Charles will do everything in his power to save Erik’s life, she has to know that. So why …?

“And you’ll be wondering what’s in it for me, I suspect,” Emma says, as if on cue. “Well, if I’m going to tell you, you’ll be needing to keep this in mind - look around you, Charles. Look where you are. There must be twenty-five or thirty people in this bar alone, not to speak of those out on the streets or the inhabitants of the city at large, including your Erik.” The sharp twist of her lips says she’s spent far too long in Erik’s mind; knows too well what’s been going on between them, about how Charles feels about him. “I want you to think upon that fact very carefully, Charles, before I go any further.”

Charles looks - because of course he looks, when she says something like that. “You might not think much of them,” Emma says as a drunk man stumbles past them, empty mug clutched in hand, “but they’re still people, and somehow I think that’s enough for you.” 

Charles doesn’t want to finish his thought; he doesn’t want to follow Emma’s warning to its natural conclusion. Doesn’t want to think about what she’s going to say next. Heat rises in the back of his throat, harsh and bitter, but he tightens his grip around the reins holding his telepathy in all the same and winces at the fresh surge of pain and the metallic taste in his mouth.

He meets her eyes; they’re cold and colorless, like twin comets. 

“The thing is, Charles, that you won’t be stopping him. Erik has his vengeance to pursue, and we are going to allow him that. I’d tell you explicitly that you shouldn’t try to talk him out of it, but if I may be frank - pretty as you are, you aren’t worth more to him than killing Shaw.”

Charles can feel the heat rising in his cheeks, unsure if he wants to withdraw or to lash out, his hands curling around the edge of his seat, fingers digging into the old wood. 

“I’m not sure how surprising you’ll find this, but Shaw is the reason I’m on board Erik’s ship in the first place. His money put me through Command school, and I worked for the Shaw Corporation for years as a subcontractor even while I was in the military. Erik knows all about it, of course, every dirty detail - his background checks were very thorough - but he thinks I cut all ties with Shaw eight years ago after I found out the truth. He thinks I’m on his ship because I want Shaw dead as much as he does, but the truth is, I’m on his ship because that’s precisely where Shaw is _paying_ me to be.”

Charles tears his gaze away from hers, unable to meet her eyes any longer. He swallows hard against the gorge rising in his throat but it does little good; he feels sick, sick to his bones, his telepathy roiling against the bounds he’s strung around it and sending pain lancing down his spine. He wants to kill her. He wants to release the flimsy wire restraints holding himself in and let his mind tear hers apart, stripping her down until she’s nothing, until she is nothing but ragged skin and blood. His skin feels hot, gut twisting knots in itself as she goes on -

“There’s a missile filled with star fuel on board the _Arkham_ ,” Emma says. “Erik plans to launch it at Shaw’s ship and destroy him and the rest of the command elite. He doesn’t realize, of course, that this won’t kill him - so many stars, compressed into one missile? Shaw has a very _unique_ mutation, you know. He absorbs energy. It makes him stronger. This is an opportunity Shaw is loathe to pass up. The entire war against the Eastern galaxies and their subsequent destruction was an opportunity just like it, but that was some time ago.” She shrugs, holding her palms up. “He needs more energy, and Erik is bringing it to him. How convenient.”

And now Emma’s told Charles everything. Charles pushes his chair back, trying not to betray himself by running, keeping his expression locked in the same mask of anger and disgust he’d been wearing in sincerity just seconds before. Charles’ skills might still be limited, but he can write damn well enough to explain to Erik that his first has betrayed him. He can tell him to dump the star stuff into the vast ocean of space before it’s too late.

Charles doesn’t make it two steps before Emma’s hand is closing around his wrist and she’s tugging him back. 

“Where are you going, sugar?” she says, rosy lips turned up into a smile. “Oh - you thought it would really be that easy? What, that I would just let you go running back to your lover to tell him everything? Let me put it this way: the second I detect any hint - any at _all_ \- in Erik’s mind that you’ve breathed a word of this to him, I’ll kill him myself where he stands. Telepath, dear. I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. Now sit back down.”

Shaking, Charles sits.

“This is my gift to you, Charles. Can’t you just accept it for what it is? Erik would be dying either way, it makes no difference to him. But at least this way you get to die at his side. You can be with him right up until the end; you won’t have to implode out in the desert somewhere and take half a planet away with you.”

 _And what’s to stop me from just killing you, Emma Frost?_ He points to her, and that appears to be all he needs to do to indicate his intention, because she laughs and says:

“If you think you can manage it without accidentally killing everyone else in a thousand mile radius - why, then I invite you to try. Go ahead. Now’s as good a time as any.” 

She’s just sitting there across from them, still swinging one long elegant leg, tapping her nails on the surface of the table. With just a thought he could turn her mind inside out. Make her believe she’s a six year old child for the rest of her natural life. Have her brain tell her body’s organs to shut down, one by one by one, an agonizing death. He imagines her reduced to her constituent atoms, blowing away on the wind. But imagine is all he can do; his telepathy stays where it is, raw and locked away. 

“That’s what I thought,” Emma says. She looks almost pitying for a moment, but a second later her face is a cold mask once more, and whatever humanity Charles thought he’d seen had been nothing but a reverie.

She slides her chair back and stands. “Come, now,” she says. “Back to the ship.” Her smile is sharp. “Erik is waiting.”

\--

Emma uses that same telepathic trick to walk Charles up the gangplank, right past Darwin and Raven, the latter covered in engine grease and throwing bread crumbs angrily at a flock of pigeons. She takes him down to the lower levels and finds an empty utility closet. She doesn’t have to warn him to stay put; Charles counts the hours in the back of his head after she leaves, curled up on the floor with his cheek pressed against steel. He peels the silver tracking stickers off his chest and plasters them onto the wall, useless and dead this far from the hospital. He feels the ship shifting as they take off again, and the moment of sudden weightlessness as they leave atmosphere. 

The hours tick past, and Charles must fall asleep at some point, because when he opens his eyes again it’s night and they’re far, far away.

\--

He finds his way in the dark, the path engraved in his memory by every night that he’s walked it alone with a strange stirring in his heart. The floor should be worn beneath his feet, for all the times Charles has seen the glow of light through the crack beneath the library door. He pauses just outside and places his hand to the wood, far enough from the metal handle that Erik could not possibly sense the heat from his skin. 

_Erik is here, and I am here with him._ Charles cherishes the thought away, tucking it somewhere soft and silk-lined in his mind, far from the razor-wire tangle fencing his telepathy in and the dark pit that holds Emma’s words. Safe. 

He holds his breath when he finally turns the knob - but from the feel of his skin or the shape of his hand Erik must somehow know that it’s him, because when Charles pushes the door open he sees Erik has stood from behind his desk so quickly that he’s knocked over his chair, papers fallen and scattering across the floor. His jacket is half-unbuttoned; he looks as though he were about to run - as if there _were_ anywhere he could possibly run, eyes wide and red-rimmed and staring right at Charles, his steel desk slowly crumpling beneath his hand. 

\--


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, none of this would happen without the patience, support, and beta skills of **Tahariel.**

“Charles,” Erik says. His name sounds broken on Erik’s lips, taut and raw, Erik’s voice gone strangely hoarse.

The desk collapses under its own weight, the metal still trembling. Charles takes a step forward, but Erik says “No - stop - ” and holds out his hand; the desk goes _flying_ across the room and slams into the far wall hard enough that the wall itself dents. Erik turns his face away from Charles, but Charles can see his eyes clenched shut and the lines drawn across his brow. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Erik says. “Why are you - Charles, you aren’t supposed to be here - you can’t - ”

Erik’s name is on Charles’s lips and he bites it back just in time, clenching his hands into fists hard enough that his nails dig into his palms, tiny burning crescents. Erik is trembling, just slightly, and it’s mirrored in the way the floor begins to shake beneath Charles’ feet, slightly at first, and then enough that he loses his balance and has to grab onto the wall to stay upright - only that’s shaking, too - the entire ship is creaking and groaning around them as Erik’s power leaks into its structure.

“Stay back!” Erik yells, but Charles ignores him, launching across the trembling floor and grasping both Erik’s arms. The ship careens violently - somehow Erik stays put, his feet magnetized to the floor, but Charles is thrown bodily against him, clutching at Erik’s shoulders to keep from falling. Erik’s hands are on his waist, fingertips digging into his flesh just a little too hard, but the ship is still shaking - Charles remembers the last time this happened, how frail their shelter suddenly felt, how easy it would be for the steel to tear away and leave them exposed to the vacuum of space - he remembers sitting with Erik while Erik was sedated, deep sleep the only thing keeping him from killing them all. 

Charles tilts his head up and finds Erik is already looking at him, his eyes widened and his lips parted. The ship’s tilted almost ninety degrees from where it had been, the gravity systems pressing Charles as heavily against Erik as if he were lying atop him. He can feel Erik’s chest moving with each shallow breath he takes, and imagines he can feel Erik’s pulse as well, fast and erratic, pounding against his body. 

He reaches up and settles a hand on Erik’s cheek - Erik goes suddenly, preternaturally, still. Charles swallows and tells himself to stay calm. He can’t speak, but he can reflect for Erik what Erik needs to do. He moves his hand back, sliding his fingers through Erik’s hair, stroking down toward the nape of his neck. He never breaks eye contact, even as books fly through the air around them, falling from the steel shelves that are now the ceiling. 

He brushes his thumb against Erik’s skin and Erik shudders - and then he sets his lips in a firm line and the ship slowly begins to right itself, Charles’ feet finding the found and all the furniture and books which have collected on one end of the ship sliding down the wall and across the floor. Erik’s hands on Charles’s hips keep him there, pressed flush against him, even though somewhere there’s an alarm blaring, the ship groaning slightly as Erik smooths out the dents and torques in its steel skeleton.

Charles smiles, and something relaxes in Eriks’ brow, a certain tension letting go. 

“The alarm,” Erik says a few seconds later, though he doesn’t move to push Charles away until Charles is already taking a step back, out of the halo of Erik’s warmth.

Erik finds his tablet in the wreckage of his desk, still remarkably whole, and stands there, tapping at the screen, until the alarm goes silent. The sudden quiet that follows seems to ring in Charles’ ears, hollow and strange. A second later, there’s a knock on the door. 

“Commander,” Darwin’s voice says from out in the hall, “May we come in, sir?”

Erik glances sidelong at Charles, who nods. “Enter,” Erik says, not even bothering to try to fit the desk back together, or indeed to return the room to any kind of order at all. Maybe, Charles thinks, it would have been pointless, anyway; it’s not like everyone on the ship didn’t feel what happened.

Darwin pushes the door open and steps through, followed a second later by Hank McCoy, who isn’t quite meeting anyone’s eye. Darwin falls short the moment his gaze lights on Charles, blinking twice.

“Wait,” he says, “I thought … didn’t we drop him off on Sihwa?” 

“Obviously not.” Erik folds his arms over his chest and his voice is testy. “I watched him leave this ship myself. As to how he got back on, I assure you I will be finding that out very shortly. McCoy, you can put that away, I don’t need it.”

“What?” Hank says. “I didn’t - I don’t -”

“Ten milligrams haloperidol in your right-hand pocket. Yes?” When Hank doesn’t answer, Erik releases a short breath and says, “You can go, McCoy. And tell MacTaggert to go to bed. She can use that syringe on herself if she finds she has difficulty.”

Hank looks uncertain; he’s glancing at Darwin like he half-expects to be told to countermand the Commander’s order, but Darwin just shakes his head and at last Hank goes, though he doesn’t shut the door behind him. 

Charles glances up at Erik, who looks angrier than he’s seen him in a while, jaw set and his eyes cold; suddenly Charles is no longer so sure he wants Darwin to leave. 

Darwin is gazing at him with a strange, sad look in his eyes, but if there’s anything he wants to say to Charles directly he keeps silent about it, until at last he looks away, to the floor, briefly, and then back at Erik. “I’m sorry, Commander.”

Erik’s inhale is sharp, and Charles is standing just close enough to see his shoulders tremble. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

Darwin nods, though even so it’s a moment before he actually turns away, stepping out the door and pulling it shut behind him. Erik moves before Charles can reach out to touch him, crossing the room toward the empty hearth. The sofa and armchairs are still intact - they must be made of actual wood and bolted to the floor - although the handles on the liquor cabinet look melted. Erik opens one of the little doors and pulls out a bottle of an amber drink, not wine but something Charles doesn’t recognize until he flips through the memories of humans he’s read and pins it to ‘whiskey.’ 

Erik twists the cap off without saying anything, neither to Charles nor to dismiss him; he just pours himself a glass of the drink and goes to sit down at one end of the sofa, bringing the bottle with him. It doesn’t fit with Charles’s concept of Erik to see him like this, the bowed line of the back of his neck, the single exposed vertebra above his collar seeming oddly vulnerable somehow, long legs spread out along the floor. Even the way he holds the glass is different. There’s none of that military precision Charles has come to associate with his posture; it’s as if he’s had it drained out of him, or simply can’t be bothered to maintain it any longer.

Charles hesitates, but it’s clear that Erik isn’t going to speak without provocation, if even then. He goes and sits down next to Erik at the very edge of the sofa, grasping his own knees, half-expecting Erik to tell him to go. But Erik just lifts the glass, not even looking at him, and takes a sip. After a while Charles shifts, moving back against the cushions, pretending to look at his lap and stealing glances at Erik out the corner of his eye. 

With the clock broken and the fire dead there’s an eerie silence in the library, broken only by the subtle movement of their breath. 

“I won’t ask why you came back,” Erik says after a time, the sound of his voice surprising, and Charles looks at Erik more fully again; Erik is still staring at his drink, still having only taken the one swallow. “Because I know why. But this isn’t your war, Charles, and you can’t convince me not to do what I have to do. I - I will find a way to save you, somehow - but for myself…. I’ve made my choice.”

 _No, my friend. My fate is sealed. Yours isn’t._ Only Charles can’t say it, neither with words nor with pen. So he reaches for Erik, slipping his hand along Erik’s cheek and turning his face toward him as he surges forward, pressing their lips hard together. 

Erik’s breath catches against Charles’ mouth and for a second Charles thinks he might pull away again - so he just kisses him harder, harsh and rough, biting at Erik’s lower lip and clinging to him with both hands. His heart twists in his chest but determined to remember this moment, the warmth of Erik’s mouth and the scrape of the stubble on his jaw, his body solid beneath him when Charles swings himself over until he’s straddling one of Erik’s thighs and leans into him, tongue in Erik’s mouth and his fingers sliding fingers back through Erik’s short hair. Erik’s body shudders against him and Charles pushes it down, pressing against the sharp edges of him and holding him there.

Only ... Erik’s not even trying to push him away. His hands grasp for Charles’ hips and smooth upward, Erik suddenly kissing him back with sloppy desperation, growling low in his chest and wrenching Charles down hard against his lap.

Charles has to swallow the sound begging to escape his throat, losing himself in the way Erik’s hands on him make his skin feel lit from within, Erik groping him like he half-expects Charles to vanish from his arms. His pulse stumbles when Erik lifts him up, shifting Charles so that he’s settled more firmly in his lap, sitting astride Erik’s hips, Erik holding onto him as if he could own him, Charles twisting his fingers in the front of Erik’s coat and shuddering when Erik sucks on his lower lip, leaning into him. Everywhere Erik touches feels more alive than ever before, want burning beneath his skin and mirrored in Erik’s wild, dark eyes. 

It’s everything Charles used to think about, dream about, touching himself and pretending his hands were Erik’s instead, falling apart to a fantasy he now knows had been a pale shadow of what being close to Erik is really like. Charles feels like he could have Erik now and in every way and it still would never be enough; Charles wants to press so close that they bleed into one another, losing grasp of their boundaries, Charles’ mind pouring into his and Erik’s body becoming Charles’ own.

Charles reaches for the next button on Erik’s jacket and frees it, then down to the next, and the next, until he can push the fabric back -- and Erik leans forward, shoving the jacket off so Charles can touch him with naught but a thin layer of cotton between his hands and Erik’s bare skin. 

“You’re sure you want this?” Erik says, breaking away from the kiss to look at him, flushed, his hair untidy. Charles can feel the heat of Erik’s body radiating up into his and shivers a little. He leans in closer and nods, holding Erik’s gaze; his hand is on Erik’s throat, Erik’s rough and stubbled skin shifting under his touch as Erik swallows hard. 

“Then come on.” 

Charles lets Erik push him back, off the sofa; his legs are weak beneath him and for a second he has to grab onto Erik’s arm. He’d be embarrassed if Erik didn’t look just as unbalanced, color high in his cheeks and his eyes too-bright in the dim light. Erik leads him out of the library, down winding halls, and Charles loses track of where they’re going, until they’re stepping into the lushly-carpeted halls of the officers’ quarters. He hasn’t been here since his first night on the ship, when Erik sent him to his study with Moira MacTaggert to wait….

Erik’s grip on Charles’ hand tightens slightly at the door to Erik’s chambers, Erik leaning forward so the ID system can scan his retina; the door slides open, letting them into the study which is lit only by a single lamp at the desk. 

Erik kisses him again as soon as the door is shut behind them, stepping forward and making Charles stumble back, moving blind and forced to trust Erik’s rough guidance. His muscles shift under Charles’ hands, easy to feel now beneath his undershirt; Charles feels clumsy and inadequate, moving on instinct and desire rather than experience, but if Erik catches on he gives no sign of it. 

They pause, and there’s a sudden crackling sound - Charles jerks away from Erik’s kiss, drawn to the burst of light - but it’s just Erik, forgoing the retinal scanner on the next locked door, electricity sparking between his fingertips and the screen. 

“ _Electro_ magnetism,” Erik says when he sees the look on Charles’ face, his lips quirking up at one corner.

The door opens with a faint whooshing noise and Erik pushes Charles back, into the darkness of his bedroom, lit only by starlight. His hands touch Charles’ human body as though he wants to claim it, fingers sliding beneath the hem of Charles’ shirt and dragging it up, over Charles’ head, off. Erik just looks at him for a few taut seconds, lips parted, something unrecognizable in his gaze, which slides from Charles’ face down to his chest, his stomach, his hips. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he murmurs. “I never thought I would ever go through with it.” 

Charles smiles - small, a little nervous - and he pushes Erik’s shirt up, letting Erik strip it off and drop it behind them on the floor. Erik’s body is strong and muscled, carved by military training and strict discipline. Charles hesitates, but Erik takes his wrists and brings his hands to his sides, letting Charles skim his touch up over the ridges of his ribcage, the hard slab of his abdomen, thumbs pressing over twin peaked nipples. Charles leans in, instinctively, and kisses his sternum, Erik’s skin warm and golden beneath his lips. There’s a tugging sensation at his hips and Charles realizes after a moment that Erik’s undone his fly without using his hands. 

“On the bed,” Erik says; he nudges Charles back several feet until the backs of Charles’ thighs hit the edge of his mattress. Erik reaches for his trousers and pulls them down along with his underwear; Charles kicks them aside and lets Erik look at him, his cock hard and jutting out from between his legs, Charles’ body completely bared. His memories of reading human minds suggest a variety of cultural norms on nudity, but Charles dismisses them. He wants Erik to have him, to have _all_ of him, and if this is the most of him he can give then so be it.

Charles pushes himself up onto the bed. It’s no larger than the bunks in the crew quarters, and if anything the mattress is firmer, but all Charles can think is that it’s Erik’s, all of it, and he’s thought about being here so many times - His attention snaps down when Erik starts unbuckling his belt, watching those long fingers tug at the leather strap and slide it free. Erik’s about to start unbuttoning his fly when Charles leans in and brushes his hands aside. 

He can feel Erik’s cock already, even now, erect and pushing up against the buttons as Charles slowly undoes them. He lets his fingers rub against the shaft through the fabric, sometimes accidental but mostly not, and he hopes only his interest is showing on his face and not his complete and utter inexperience. When he pulls Erik’s trousers down his cock springs free, huge and wet at the tip. It’s significantly larger than Charles’ own, which is unexpected but not at all unwelcome. Charles draws a few experimental strokes down its length and Erik shudders and grips Charles’ shoulder, fingers digging in hard. 

“It’s been a long time,” Erik says, his eyes fluttering open from where they’d fallen shut. It sounds like an apology.

It shouldn’t be different, to touch a cock that isn’t his own, and yet somehow it is. Erik is hot and solid beneath his palm, and the skin feels like velvet here, moving easily under his grasp. Charles doesn’t want to stop touching him, but he makes himself do it anyway, pushing Erik’s trousers the rest of the way down until Erik can step out of them, toeing off his shoes and socks as well. Charles wants to reach for his cock again but Erik’s already moving forward, curling an arm around Charles’s waist and pulling him up the bed, toward the pillows. 

Charles takes in a sudden breath when Erik settles down atop him; Erik’s heavier than he looks, but the weight doesn’t feel suffocating. He can feel the heat of Erik’s groin driving down against his hip, and with their bare skin pressed together Charles can’t help arching his back, craving friction. 

“Fuck,” Erik whispers against his neck, and bites down, hard enough that Charles has to press his wrist to his mouth to keep himself from crying out. 

Erik shifts, lining their cocks up between their bodies, and rolls his hips down. The sudden crest of pleasure takes Charles by surprise and he gasps, reaching for Erik’s ass to make him do it again, desperate to recreate the sensation. The second time around it feels like someone’s sparked a current in his veins, electricity tingling underneath his skin. Erik laughs, the sound rough, and tangles a hand up in his hair as he kisses him. 

“Would you rather top or bottom?” Erik asks when the kiss finally breaks, both of them with lips swollen, breathless. 

Charles looks at him, confused.

“I’ll rephrase,” Erik says. “Yes or no question. Do you want me to fuck you?”

Well, _that_ much is translatable from the ‘lesson’ Raven gave him - and Charles is suddenly, obscenely, grateful to her for it. He nods, once, and pulls Erik down into another harsh kiss, loving the sound Erik makes against his mouth and the greedy way Erik touches him. 

When Erik breaks the kiss and pulls away Charles can’t help feeling, briefly, bereft - but it’s only to reach below his bed to pull out one of the drawers underneath, emerging with a tube of something in one hand and what Charles recognizes as a condom in the other. “If you need me to slow down or stop, let me know,” Erik says. He pops the cap off the tube and squeezes something clear and gelatinous into his hand, wetting his fingers with it.

Erik settles back down on top of him, his weight forcing Charles’ legs apart to accommodate him. Charles jumps a little when Erik slips his finger between his cheeks, even though he knew what to expect; the contact there, where only Charles has ever touched himself before, feels strange but … good, somehow, as well, Erik teasing his touch along sensitive skin. When he pushes that finger in, Charles’ gut tightens - but just as quickly he’s relaxing, giving over to the feeling of fullness and the sliding sensation as Erik moves his finger.

“You’re so tight,” Erik murmurs, sounding pleased. 

The second finger makes Charles gasp and he presses the heel of his hand to his mouth again, holding himself back from making a sound. He can feel his flesh stretching around Erik’s knuckles, hot and taut, his body struggling to make sense of what’s happening. 

Charles tries to make himself breathe slowly, focusing on Erik’s face: the line of his nose, the softness of his lips - no longer strangers to Charles’ touch. His heart is thrumming away in his stomach, beating too quickly to make out individual beats. 

But Charles doesn’t want him to stop. He wants more. He wants - he knows what he wants, and it isn’t Erik’s fingers, or not only. Charles grips the back of Erik’s neck, keeping him there as Charles finally dares to lower the hand from his mouth, twisting it in the bedsheets instead. 

“You’re all right,” Erik says, kissing Charles’ collarbone and spreading his fingers just slightly, enough to make him ache. He can feel his ass spasming around the intrusion, every part of him alert and hypersensitive. Erik tongues at one of his nipples and Charles almost groans, the sensation like a jolt straight to his cock.

Erik works his fingers slowly, in and out, spreading them from time to time to stretch Charles’ hole around them until the muscle gives more easily. When he adds a third it’s easier. Erik’s fingers are longer than his, but Erik moves with more dexterity and with the confidence of experience. When his fingertips brush up against something inside Charles that makes Charles seize up, sudden and unavoidable pleasure surging through him, Charles has to turn his face into the pillow to keep himself silent, mouth open in a noiseless cry and his eyes squeezed shut. The sensation leaves him shaking and breathless, and then Erik does it again, and again, like he wants to pull Charles apart at the seams right here and now. 

Erik curls a hand around Charles’ cock and starts stroking up his shaft with quick firm movements, moving in time with his fingers in Charles’ hole, working him until Charles is a quivering mess beneath him, spread out between Erik’s hands with his head thrown back and his throat exposed, his body shaking with the effort of keeping his entire being from flying apart. It’s a dangerous feeling, being this close to the edge, every part of him welling up so close beneath his surface.

“Yes,” Erik says, his voice sounding raw and strange, and how is it that Charles had never noticed his accent before? “Yes, Charles - please, do it, I want you to. Come for me - ”

And Charles does, the sudden shock of it coursing through him alongside the ecstasy, his cock throbbing and pulsing in Erik’s hand, shooting long streaks of come out over Erik’s knuckles and across his own belly. He feels dizzy, like he’s lost the thread that tethers him down, his mind unspooling and his body alight with fire. Even his ass convulses around Erik’s fingers, trying to drag them in deeper, the orgasm somehow far better than anything Charles had ever eked out of himself, shuddering down to the tips of his curled toes. It leaves him feeling worn-out and languid when he collapses onto the bed beneath Erik, staring up at him with wide eyes.

Erik grins when he kisses him this time, teeth sharp against Charles’ lips, his come-covered hand leaving a sticky trail on Charles’ sweaty skin when he touches him. Charles is halfway to worrying he’s climaxed too soon, that he misunderstood, but Erik just whispers, “You’re perfect,” and any doubts fly right out of his mind.

Erik pulls his fingers out of Charles’ hole slowly. There’s the tear of foil and somehow Charles manages to blink open his heavy eyes to watch as Erik rolls the condom down onto his cock, his erection swelling beneath the latex, the head gone ruddy. 

“Ready?” Erik says as he slicks himself up with the clear gel and Charles nods, dragging his gaze back up to Erik’s face as Erik lines the tip of his cock up with Charles’ hole and begins to push in.

It hurts. The stretch is far greater than just three fingers, it feels like, forcing Charles’ hole to make way for it, thick and hard and so unlike anything he’s ever taken before. Both his hands have grasped onto Erik’s upper arms, nails digging into his flesh as Charles grits his teeth and tries not to groan in pain. He almost doesn’t think it will fit - only Erik manages it, somehow, pushing himself firmly in and lodging himself balls-deep in Charles’ ass, his skin wet with perspiration and his eyes locked onto Charles’.

Erik waits, like that, for a while, buried inside him. Charles can feel Erik’s cock throbbing in his hole and his thighs ache a little, too, just from being spread like this. But the pain is fading quickly, giving way to something warmer and easier as Charles’ body finally starts to relax again. 

Charles reaches down with both hands to grasp the meat of Erik’s ass and pull him forward, grinding them together as if he could somehow bring even more of Erik into his body. He can see Erik’s pulse pounding beneath his skin at his neck; it echoes his own, which stumbles below his sternum like a wild thing, and even though Charles has come already that doesn’t stop him from feeling a tingle of pleasure rising in his gut. 

He can’t have Erik the way he really wants to, the way stars do, their minds losing all sense of boundaries and blurring into one another. But he can have this. 

Erik starts to move, slowly at first, gradually building up a rhythm that rocks them together on the bed, the mattress creaking beneath their combined weights. Charles peppers every bit of Erik he can reach with kisses as Erik thrusts between his legs, grabbing at Charles’ hair and making him look at him. In these shadows Charles can see the stars reflected in his eyes, a dazzling galaxy of little bright things, and for once his stomach doesn’t feel like it’s fallen out from under him to see them. A strand of hair has fallen out of careful place and hangs over Erik’s forehead but Charles can’t bring himself to push it back. He likes this chink in Erik’s armor. Likes that Erik lets him see it, as if it were some secret they keep together.

“Charles.” Erik says his name like it’s something more than that, tasting the syllables on his tongue. He fucks him hard and steady, their bodies tangled up together like their fingers clasped on the pillow by Charles’ head. The lingering ache in Charles’ ass is tied up too much with the afterglow, sensation becoming a pleasure in itself, warm in Charles’ bones.

Charles smiles at Erik and feels his heart break a little to see Erik smile back. He wishes more than anything in that moment that it never had to end, that this would somehow convince Erik to abandon his mad, suicidal quest for retribution. But it won’t, and both of them know it. 

Erik comes with a shuddering groan, fingers clenching tight around Charles’ hand and tipping his head forward to Charles’ chest. Charles can feel his cock pulsing deep inside him and he squeezes himself around it, loving the little hitch in Erik’s moan when he does. He wants to pull Erik’s ear to his mouth and whisper _I love you_ , but without his voice all he can do is say it in the way he touches him, stroking his fingers through Erik’s hair and down the line of his back, trying to memorize the way Erik feels beneath his hand.

Erik kisses Charles’ sternum as he comes down, and he looks as boneless and sated as Charles feels, the two of them reaching for each other in the dark like night flowers, coiling together. 

“Stay here tonight,” Erik says, once he’s pulled out of Charles and thrown away the condom, the two of them lying in a tangle of naked limbs beneath the cool layer of Erik’s sheets. His face is an inch from Charles’ own, the bed too small to allow for anything but sharing a pillow; his every exhale is warm against Charles’ skin, fingertips tracing small circles on Charles’ shoulder.

Nodding, Charles draws closer, tucking his head under Erik’s chin and trembling a little before Erik wraps his arms around him, settles him. Sleep takes Erik quickly and Charles tilts his head toward Erik’s chest, listening to the throb of his heart beating a soothing rhythm against his ear, slow and steady. His ass still aches, but it’s a dull sensation beneath all the rest of it, dropping easily into the background when Charles has the weight of Erik’s arm and the feel of Erik’s skin to think of.

He should be able to sleep easily like this, in the halo of Erik’s warmth, but as the hours tick past Charles lies awake, watching the slow rise and fall of Erik’s chest with his breath and trying not to think about the day, ever approaching, a red-circled square on Erik’s calendar, when that breath will finally and inevitably stop.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [who put this tumblr link here?](http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com)


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